Inhale. Exhale. My breathing coincides with the cadence of the waves rolling into shore along the tranquil town of Las Tunas. My feet sink into the peppered sand and I crinkle my toes around its coarseness. The only busy-ness in the vicinity are the bright orange and black-striped sand bubbler crabs scurrying laterally across the beach before ducking into freshly dug holes. Their name comes from how they scoop up sand, sift through it to eat benthic plankton attached to the grains, and replace it in minute balls, or sand bubbles. During low tide, the beach is covered in these sand bubbles left behind by the crabs quickly scooping and discarding sand grains. Creatures like this often remind me of the diversity on this planet. Especially along this small section of the equator, wherever there may be a niche to fill, there is a plant or animal designed simply to fill it.
The community of Las Tunas reminds me of these niche creatures, a small town strung along the coast of Ecuador in the province of Manabí. It is often overshadowed by its neighbor, Ayampe, by international tourists searching for sunrises and sunsets of catching waves and hot afternoons of acai bowls and chilled coconuts. In Las Tunas, you still find families with roots for generations amid brightly-painted concrete houses. The beach remains free of commercialization allowing the four out of five species of sea turtle in the world to nest peacefully. The community serves an important niche by remaining authentic to the culture of the locals and providing a safe space for the earth and all her creatures.
I came to Las Tunas through a recommendation to work with Fundación Jocotoco, an Ecuadorian conservation non-profit with 15 reserves across the country. Originally, I was connected with Byron Delgado, the Ayampe reserve manager, who has been linking the community to conservation efforts for ten years. I planned to spend three weeks volunteering with Jocotoco on conservation projects in the community and interviewing different actors about their perception of conservation as well as women’s roles in it. Before arriving, I expected to dive into a utopian society in which community members are involved in sustainable tourism as a conservation activity that also yields financial security. I envisioned women-led groups making artisanal goods from recycled materials and leading regenerative agricultural practices. The reality was an abrupt awakening.
“What are the challenges Las Tunas faces regarding conservation?” I prompted René Zambrano, the park guard for the Ayampe Reserve. He sighed heavily and stooped to collect a plastic Gatorade bottle surfaced by the tide. We were strolling on the beach around 6am, picking up trash washed up overnight and checking on the sea turtle nests along the shore. He responded by swallowing his “s”s in the thick accent of the coast. The community isn’t inspired to participate in conservation, he told me, they want to be compensated for keeping their streets trash-free and reforesting their environment. “But if they do clean up trash and plant trees, won’t this increase ecotourism opportunities in the future?” I asked.
“Yes, but we are not good at thinking in the long-term,” referring to his community, Las Tunas.
I nodded. “Humanity isn’t in general.”
He shook his head in agreement.
We continued along the beach. I gathered pieces of fluorescent turquoise fishing line, tiny plastics twined around dried up sea algae, so many it seemed as if they belonged there. René explained to me that the majority of the trash is discarded by the fishing boats that crawl along the horizon at dawn and dusk, many of them large, commercial boats for bustling tourist destinations, such as Montañita and Salinas. Overtime, the ocean’s turbulence breaks apart the plastic utensils and Styrofoam containers into thousands of plastic pieces, each as unique as the myriad niche species in this country. René told me the plastic rings attached to bottle caps are the worst predators to sea turtles. When the turtles are young, the rings are caught around their necks and eventually suffocate them as they grow. We came across the carcasses of puffer fish and a sea lion, and he also explained that animals are often caught in fishing nets. As they remove them from the nets, the fishermen kill them, leaving their remains to wash ashore.
I carried this knowledge heavily as we walked south at the edge of the tide. Soon we reached the end of the beach, marked by a towering sandstone wall stretching into the sea. Waves bashed against the base, forming softened pockets along the rock with millennia. Two hundred feet or so from the rock wall, René excitedly pointed out turtle footprints marked into the sand. They indicated that a mama turtle—70 to 80 pounds in size—had pushed herself ashore to dig a nest, lay her eggs, conceal them with layers of warm sand, and return to the sea. René knelt and began digging where the footprints ended and I followed suit in an adjacent mound of sand. We delved into the layers of the beach for an hour or so, until René suddenly touched a few soft eggs, resembling ping pong balls. He allowed me to snap a picture before covering them back up, then placing a metal grate and Jocotoco sign alerting the public to their presence. René informed me that there could be up to one hundred eggs in the nest which would mature over two months, before hatching. Although I was only there for three weeks, ripening clutches of eggs were scattered along the beach. I hoped to have the good luck of observing one clutch as they hatched.
Collecting trash with René was an expression of my gratitude for the overwhelming abundance pachamama, the Quechua word for Mother Earth, has given me. René once told me that pachamama does her part, so we must do ours.
Along with shadowing René’s work in conservation, I also spent time getting to know community members. Most days during the week, I shared lunch and dinner with the Holguin family, made up of three women, Dana, the daughter, Laly, the mother, and Marciana, the grandmother along with Marciana’s disabled husband who she referred to as mi esposo or my spouse. Over grilled fish and sweet plantains, I listened to their stories.
Laly spent much of her time bustling around the home before leaving hurriedly to go to community council meetings in the afternoons as the community’s Director of Education. Dana, slight and quiet, just finished high school with the highest grades in her class, Laly commented proudly. She is set on university, the first of her family to attend, but her mother and grandmother are unsure if they can financially support this dream. In Ecuador, public university tuition is free. Housing, food, and transportation is not, if you do not live in a city with a university, like in Dana’s case. This serves as a significant barrier for many youth in rural Ecuador. To overcome it, however, she spends her time attending online workshops at various universities across the continent to apply for scholarship programs. With her determination, I am certain she will fulfill her dream.
Marciana often sat with me hours after lunch answering my questions about the community and her perception of conservation. She’s lived most of her life in Las Tunas, so she often compared the lifestyle and environment of the past to that of the community today. The men of Las Tunas have depended mostly on fishing, but she told me “currently, there are more boats than fish” due to overfishing. Many families will need to find another source of income soon. She also expressed worry about drought. In prior decades, Río Ayampe would contribute to an ample mangrove connecting the river to the sea and supporting boundless forms of life. These days, only flooding events bring this connection. As she spoke about the depletion of her home, her face drew long with forced acceptance of the new reality and a community turning away from taking action. I empathize deeply.
There are glimmers of hope for Las Tunas and surrounding communities. Marciana introduced me to Paula, a freckled and bronzed Quiteña in her late thirties. After living in Europe for 20 years, she landed just outside Las Tunas during the pandemic and has committed to supporting the growth of a regenerative and sustainable community. Along with a handful of others, she is in the process of founding an organization, Tierra Nativa, to connect environmental efforts in the zone and initiate projects which realize her vision for the community. These projects include creating community and family gardens to increase access to fresh food and re-establish a relationship between the people and their land. The organization also aspires to build a sea turtle rescue center in collaboration with Jocotoco in Las Tunas. To spread awaRenéss and increase participation, Paula and one of her colleagues organize mingas or service events to clean up trash along the beach or in the mangrove. After collecting waste items, they sort them and weigh each category of waste. With this data, they intend to convince policymakers to regulate permitted packaging materials to reduce microplastic contamination in the ocean.
In each interview I conducted, I also heard about Byron’s tireless efforts to support community participation in conservation and sustainable economic opportunities. A few years ago, he initiated a festival around the pechiche, a fruit native to the region, resembling a more acidic grape. During this festival, locals—mostly women—make artisanal goods from pechiche such as cakes, candies, and even liqueur. The festival is also used as a means to expand environmental education around waste and the local environment. Locals, domestic, and international tourists attend the festival which contributes to its success. Due to this, two other festivals celebrating local fruits were established with a similar purpose. This custom seems to be both a celebration of local culture as it interacts with nature as well as a means to increase environmental education and participation. I intend to introduce this concept to other communities to achieve similar success.
On my last morning in Las Tunas, I met René before the sun rose and we wandered along the empty beach, gathering pieces of humanity’s ignorance. Suddenly, René pointed about a hundred feet ahead of us, “Look, a turtle!” I struggled to see it, lacking René’s impeccable bird-watching vision. As we moved closer, I caught sight of a tiny black creature wiggling toward the sea. I approached just as the tide washed up the small turtle, tumbling in the current, and carried it home.
I returned to René who knelt next to the nearby nest, scooping up sand and discarded shells. Then, he gently placed a few handfuls of infant turtles adjacent to the nests. On occasion, the mama turtle may dig a nest and cover it so well that the newborns cannot surface, especially those at the bottom of the pile. In this case, the majority of the baby turtles had hatched and made their way to the sea by the reflection of moonlight. Eleven, however, were unable to climb out. Fortunately, René rescued them before the heat of the equatorial sun scorched them.
After scooping them out, the tiny turtles lay spent from their failed efforts. After a few minutes, however, the strongest of the bunch began pushing their flippers into the sand. It was a long journey to reach the ocean. Just as one gained momentum, she took a nosedive into a human footprint which created a mountain for her to clamber over. The irony was not lost on me.
As they drew close to the tide, they pumped their little wings and shimmied their new shells in a sprint. We cheered as a wave swept them away from shore. It was anything but graceful. The undulating waves spared no concern for the hatchlings, spinning and dragging them into the unyielding force of the ocean. But they had survived our domain; the rest was beyond our control. Without us guarding the land section of their journey, many would have been eaten by dogs or crabs, picked up by people believing they are tortoises, or other story endings not in the ocean. Their fight continues, however, at sea. They must dodge and outswim many marine animals before arriving in the open ocean with a higher chance of survival. When they reach maturity, they will return to the beaches of Las Tunas to lay their eggs and continue in perpetuity.
In these moments, I draw inspiration from the beauty of pachamama’s creatures. Listening to extensive challenges facing communities like Las Tunas and El Placer and attempting to remain solution-focused is tiring and detaining. Yet observing the innate strength and determination of the little hatchlings re-ignites my sense of purpose for this work. Through my experience in Las Tunas, I gained a deeper understanding of the barriers this community, and likely many others, face to augmenting conservation efforts through ecotourism. Just like the sand bubbler crabs, I’ve found my niche in this movement: identifying the successes some communities have had and sharing this information with other communities in need. Building a sustainable future for rural populations will not ensue with the success of one, but rather the exchange of our challenges and achievements in creating a novel solution. The rapid loss of biodiversity and associated degradation of ecosystem services for human communities is a calamity, leaving no winners. Sharing ideas and uniting efforts will clear pathways to scale sustainable solutions for all.
*See below for behind-the-scenes video of a hatchling making her way towards the sea.