During the late summer and early fall, an awesome spectacle takes place on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast. Thousands of olive ridley sea turtles emerge from the ocean. Slowly, they haul themselves up the beach. Using their flippers like shovels, the turtles dig holes in the sand. They lay their eggs. Then they make their way back down the beach and into the sea. 

Hundreds of tourists travel to Nicaragua to see the turtles. But the event also attracts some unwanted visitors. Poachers come to the beaches too. They steal the eggs and sell them on the black market. 

Scientists with the conservation group Paso Pacifíco are trying to stop the poachers. For the past three years, they have been working on a device called the InvestEGGator. It looks just like a sea turtle egg—with one big difference. It contains a GPS tracker. If poachers steal the decoy, the tracker can send out a signal about where the egg is. 

Ecologist Kim Williams-Guillén worked on the design of the InvestEGGator. She hopes the device helps track down the wildlife criminals. “We may be able to put a big dent in turtle poaching,” she says. 

Sea turtles are some of the most endangered animals on the planet. Out of the seven sea turtle species, six are at risk of becoming extinct. 

From the moment sea turtles are born, they face many threats. Tiny hatchlings must crawl across vast beaches to reach the water. Birds, dogs, and other predators snatch many of them before they get there. In the ocean, turtles can get caught in fishing nets and drown. Many others die from eating plastic trash they mistake for food.

Poachers make life even harder for the turtles. Every year, millions of sea turtle eggs are stolen from nests and sold to restaurants. In some parts of the world, the eggs are considered a delicacy. People pay as much as $300 per egg! 

A Good Egg

Williams-Guillén was inspired to track poachers after watching a TV show. In the show, government agents used a hidden tracking device to catch a criminal. Williams-Guillén realized that she could do the same thing with turtle eggs.

First, she designed the eggshell on her computer. Then she built it with a 3-D printer. Getting the right texture was tricky. Sea turtle eggs have squishier shells than chicken eggs. Williams-Guillén made the eggs out of a soft type of plastic.

To make the decoys look real, Williams-Guillén turned to Lauren Wilde. She’s a makeup artist who works in film and TV. Wilde helped sand and paint the eggs. She also coated the eggs with waterproof glue to protect the hardware inside. The final egg looks a bit like a Ping-Pong ball. 

But will the InvestEGGator really work? For the past two years, researcher Helen Pheasey has been testing the eggs in Costa Rica. She wants to see if the tracker works, and if the decoys can fool poachers.

Pheasey has a few tricks to slip InvestEGGators into turtle nests. First, she walks along the beach, looking for turtle tracks. Once Pheasey finds a female, she approaches it quietly so she doesn’t scare it. When the turtle is midway through laying its eggs, Pheasey tucks a fake one into the nest. The turtle lays more eggs, hiding the decoy.

So far, the technology seems to work. Pheasey has successfully tracked a few stolen eggs. She hopes her tests help scientists improve the device and, eventually, put a stop to turtle poaching. “If you can identify poachers’ trade routes, you can have police waiting for them,” she says. That could protect sea turtles for generations to come.