Turtle Beach

Witness the high-tech expedition to discover what brings tens of thousands of sea turtles to Costa Rica to nest.

Locals call it the arribada, Spanish for “arrival”: the magical days and nights when tens of thousands of sea turtles come ashore on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast to lay millions of eggs. In Turtle Beach, a documentary from The Nature of Things, Canadian naturalist and cinematographer Hugo Kitching follows a team of international scientists on a groundbreaking expedition to uncover the mysteries of this rare phenomenon. The star of the arribada is the olive ridley sea turtle. Named for its green hue, the olive ridley is one of the most abundant and least understood of the world’s seven sea turtle species. Female turtles come ashore two to three times per breeding season to lay a clutch of about 100 eggs.