Maria Rodriguez
Community Ocean Guardian, Costa Rica
Maria Rodriguez remembers when poachers would take 80% of the leatherback turtle eggs on Playa Ostional before dawn. She was 24 years old, a fisherman's daughter who had grown up watching the annual nesting migration like a religious event.
"We knew it was wrong," she says quietly. "But there was no other income."
Today at 54, Maria leads a team of 12 TIDE-trained community guardians who have achieved something once considered impossible: zero poaching incidents on a 4-kilometer stretch of beach for six consecutive seasons.
The transformation wasn't achieved through enforcement. It came through economics. TIDE's community partnership model pays guardian stipends, trains eco-tourism guides, and has helped establish a community-owned hatchery that generates income from ethical wildlife tourism.
Last season, 847 leatherback nests were protected. 62,000 hatchlings reached the ocean. Three of those hatchlings — fitted with TIDE's micro-satellite tags before their first swim — have already been detected 2,400 miles away in the warm waters off the Galápagos.
"When I see the data come in on my phone," Maria says, holding up a TIDE field app showing a blinking dot far out in the Pacific, "I know that dot is ours. That's our beach."
