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May 2007
CEA Electronic Communications are in English and Spanish. Para leer este boletín en español haz clic aquí.
Click on the images to see larger versions.
World Ocean Day – June 8
To celebrate World Ocean Day, we are organizing a reef clean-up in Akumal. We invite and welcome any participants who want to combine vacation time with doing something helpful for the environment! We also invite local divers to join us in our efforts. If you want to participate in this event or for more information, please contact CEA or the local dive shops.
Turtle Season in Akumal
We are pleased to inform you that we already have 17 Loggerhead nests on Akumal’s beaches, 16 of them located on site and 1 of them relocated. The first days of the season seemed to be slow, but now we are doing great! Our turtles have started nesting and in a couple of months we will have our first hatchlings.
Please help us keep this awesome natural event happening here by supporting us and actively participating in our different events and campaigns to protect our turtles: beach clean-ups, changing bright lights on the beaches, not leaving any objects which could block the way of females trying to nest, letting other people know that it is a federal offense to bother turtles, and don’t forget to inform CEA of your observations.
CEA invites you to join us daily on beach clean-ups, not just for special occasions. All of us can contribute by picking up any garbage we find every day while walking on the beach. These activities will avoid problems to both marine and land animals living here. Don’t forget to adopt your baby turtles, nests or families, in support of our Sea Turtle Protection Program.
Thanks for your help and support.
Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System Workshop
This month, CEA’s Reef Monitoring staff held a workshop with José Juan Domínguez Calderón, the regional technical sub-director of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System (MBRS) project. The purpose of this workshop was to train CEA’s reef team in putting the monitoring data on the MBRS database and, more generally, to discuss and compare our methods and data reliability.
José Juan congratulated us for the high quality of our work and, of the three MBRS monitoring sites represented in México (Chinchorro Bank, and the reefs of Xcalak and Akumal), the data collected in Akumal by CEA’s volunteers are the most comprehensive.
Besides the regional scale integration using the MBRS methodology, we can be particularly proud of being the first ones to have characterized the reef ecosystem in the region of Akumal. The data collected in 2006–2007 will serve as a reference for future monitoring sessions.
Once again, we would like to thank all the volunteers and staff who took part in the first phase of this work: Thalia, David, Maria, Jose, Nicole, Harvey, Sanja, Veronica, Diana, Joel, Miguel Ángel and Hamid, and especially José Juan for giving the course, and Hotel Club Akumal Caribe for offering logistical support.
World Turtle Day
CEA thanks all of you who joined us in our World Turtle Day Celebration on May 23. We had people help us online with baby, nest and family turtle adoptions and here in Akumal with the beach clean-up, and our friends of LocoGringo came to CEA to make donations. We are very happy to have more people every year joining us.
Our volunteers walked up and down the beach all day wearing a turtle shell costume, offering information on turtle ecology and about CEA’s efforts to protect this threatened species. For CEA’s team it was a successful day, and we ended it by making a big sand turtle on the beach to remind everyone that Akumal is The Place of the Turtles. To see pictures of our World Turtle Day activities, click here.
Thank You, Volunteers!
We are more than pleased with the help from our volunteers. They make our work possible, which is why we want to recognize them one more time for their support. Thank you very much for all your work! Maria and Jose, thanks again. We hope you had had a nice trip home. See you soon…
New Volunteers' Web Group
If you have been part of our volunteer team, or will become part, join our volunteers' space.
International Migratory Bird Day
Just as international tourists flock to Akumal, many birds migrate between their winter and summer homes. Each year, the second Saturday in May is a day to encourage bird conservation and to increase awareness of these fellow travelers. International Migratory Bird Day was created in 1993 specifically to highlight the migration of nearly 350 species of migratory birds. This year it was celebrated on May 12 in Canada, the U.S., México and Central America through bird festivals, bird walks and education programs.
Migratory birds are some of the most beautiful, observable and remarkable wildlife that share our world. Many know migratory birds as harbingers of spring and melodious songsters of the woods. Migratory birds are also an important economic resource, controlling insect pests and generating billions in recreational dollars.
Unfortunately, research has shown that many migratory bird species are in decline, facing a growing number of threats on their migration routes and in both their summer and winter habitats. Thus it's good to have a day to foster appreciation and to learn what can be done to help. For more information about International Migratory Bird Day, please click here.
Staff Birthdays
May 14 – Bonifacio Poot Ek, Maintenance
May 16 – Pascual Poot Ek, Accounting Manager
Calendar of Events
Please check at the CEA Center for information on current CEA presentations.
June 5 – World Environment Day
Recycling in Akumal
We invite you to participate in a municipal-wide recycling event, Tuesday, June 5, as part of World Environment Day. Please bring your PET (plastics), aluminum, glass, electronics, paper and cardboard to CEA. The paper and cardboard will be donated for production of free school books. Drop-off points are: CEA, Casa de Cultura of Tulúm and the Municipal Office in Playa del Carmen.
Playa del Carmen – Plaza 28 de Julio from 8 AM to 4 PM
Akumal – Centro Ecológico Akumal from 9 AM to 1 PM
Tulúm – Casa de la Cultura de Tulúm from 9 AM to 1 PM
Mark your calendar and plan to attend our Third Annual CEA Festival, Save Our Seas, February 20 and 21, 2008. Contact us for more information.
Please continue to tell your friends about CEA! Many CEA Members join after being referred to CEA by people like you. If you have questions about how you can become more involved, please contact us. The Yucatan Environmental Foundation is the U.S. 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor for CEA. All donations made through YEF for CEA are tax-deductible in the U.S.
If you would like to subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter, or simply need to contact CEA, please click here.
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