7 years ago, we moved to a remote surfing town on the Pacific coast of Guatemala called El Paredon where we started a small hostel. We fell in love with this tropical place and its picturesque views of the beach and ocean. The variety of wildlife includes dolphins, whales, and of course Sea Turtles.

Our first turtle season was incredible as we saw many turtles laying their eggs right in front of us. We discovered that in Guatemala it is still LEGAL to poach turtle eggs. After talking with locals and conducting further research we learned that there isn’t enough work in the area and that the turtle eggs provide an income to feed their families. Turtle eggs are sold as aphrodisiacs and placed raw in orange juice, for consumption. After careful consideration, we decided to find a win-win solution.

We started a turtle hatchery and in season, we took all the town tourists for a bucket list experience to help us release baby turtles. We collected donations from the tours and started to buy back eggs from the poachers, but this wasn’t very efficient. As it takes up to 50 days for a turtle to hatch and because we only received donations when releasing the baby turtles it was too late to buy back the first 10 thousand eggs. After two years we decided to take the next step and buy back all eggs upfront from the poachers for a fair price. Some would ask, “Aren’t you encouraging the poachers to poach more?” But as long as the law remains static this is the only way to create a more positive impact. The turtles get a chance to survive, while the poachers can feed their families, and tourists can help release these incredible creatures or enjoy Turtology digital art.

To set ourselves up for more opportunities we joined our forces with the fantastic digital artist: Joan Barbosa. Joan transforms photos from the turtle project into fascinating high-quality NFT’s with their colorful beauty. He helped us create and set up the Turtology series from which all gains go straight to the Turtle conservation project. By buying or selling Turtology you can enjoy your art while saving sea turtles. Turteley awesome!

We have also set up an NGO in The US which is called: Paredon Sea Turtle Foundation for more information contact The Driftwood Surfer hostel El Paredon, Guatemala.