Equipo Tora Carey (ETC) is a community-based marine conservation and sustainable development NGO. We are located in the remote coastal community of El Jobo in Costa Rica´s northern Pacific. Tropical Dry Forest and marine habitats surround our small community. We focus our work on sea turtle and, shark and ray conservation. We actively participate in environmental education for all ages, citizen science, and research. Thanks to you efforts, many of the children in the community participate in different monitoring programs along with their parents.

As a community-based NGO ETC does not own any property, we rely on using our collaborators and friends' houses and facilities to store our equipment, do lab work, hold meetings, and environmental education classes.

ETC believes in community-based science to achieve sustainable development, which is why all of our funding goes directly in maintaining steady salaries for the five local fisherman, who currently sustain and direct all of our research activities (daily sea turtle and ray monitoring and nest protection). Thus, we are big on people and achievements, but small in equipment and supplies.

Forest fires have threatened houses and cattle for weeks. Despite numerous calls to firefighters, no unit was available to assist us. We did our best to create fire barriers to prevent the fire reaching our warehouse. Sadly, the fires reached the building on May 8 due to a rapid change in winds and everything burned.

All equipment ETC owned (snorkeling equipment of our "Environmental Protectors" kids club, research and diving equipment used to monitor rays and sea turtles, microscopes, a boat engine, etc.) was destroyed.

Small donations and personal funds helped purchase every little part of ETCs equipment making the cost of losing everything in only seconds is so high to us. 

Please help us get back on the beaches and classrooms to continue our efforts towards marine conservation and sustainable development.

We urgently need the replacement (either economically or in material) of the following items:

General in-water monitoring:
- 1 30Hp Suzuki motor - $5000
- 2 Steel Scuba Tanks - $500 each
- 1 Regulator and Octopus - $ 550
- 8 Diving wetsuits, boots and head covers - $1600 ($200 each)
- 25 snorkeling equipments adults  - $3000 ($140 each) 
- 4 Diving bags - $120 ($30 each)
- 5 Diving flashlight - $250 ($50 each)
- 1 Secchi Disk - $80
- 1 Plancton net and sampling kit - $300
- 5 Sediment sampling tubes - $50 ($10 each)

Ray monitoring:
- 8 fishing hand nets - $320 ($40 each)
- 3 big plastic boxes - $42 ($14 each)
- Custom made Floy tags and pistols - $1200
- Tubes, surgery tools, plastic boxed - $400

Sea turtle in-water monitoring equipment:
- 3 Turtle tange nets - $2700 ($900 each)
- 2 boyes - $60 ($30 each)
- Heavy duty electronic scale for weighting turtle - $500
- Strings and head-covers for turtles - $200

Environmental education materials:
- 1 Electronic microscope - $160
- 15 snorkeling equipments kids - $525 ($35 each)
- Paint, paintbrushes, pencils, etc. - $300

Please consider donating any of these materials, or support the purchase of specific items . Equipo Tora Carey would be infinitely grateful and in change is offering the following opportunities to participate in our research activities:

For amounts of:

$50:
Participation in nightly beach patrolling and sea turtle hatchling release.

$100:
One night and three meals at a local community house, including beach patrolling and sea turtle hatchling release.

$150:
Participation in ray monitoring and tagging, including a typical local lunch (fresh, fried fish).

$250:
1/2 day sailing tour with snorkeling and introduction on the natural history of the area.

$500:
Participation in sea turtle foraging-ground monitoring in a remote corral reef, including on-board lunch (4 persons max. at a time).

$1000:
Full day sailing tour to identify humpback whales (from July on) and participate in sea turtle foraging-ground monitoring, including Caribbean lunch, drinks and refreshments.

above $2000:
Custom-designed weekend (one night - two days), including the participation at any of these activities.