A Costa Rica satellite tracking expedition recently got underway at Cocos Island to study its green sea turtle and hawksbill visitors.

Researchers and conservationists travel Costa Rica open waters for 30 hours or more in their pursuit of migration habits about these ancient marine animals. Think of what they do as a kind of working Costa Rica vacation that, hopefully, will contribute to preserving these marvelous marine reptiles now sadly endangered in much of their range.

Cocos Island, once described by the famed oceanographer, Jacque Cousteau, as the most beautiful island he had ever visited, lies some 340 miles off the shore of Costa Rica, about halfway to the Galapagos Islands.

It was not the pretty palm trees or beaches that captured the imagination of the Captain. Its beauty lies off its shores, under water, in a place that Costa Ricans have voted one of the Seven Wonders of Cost Rica.

Cocos Island has fired the imagination of sailors, pirates and writers for more than 300 years and today it is unquestionably the most famous island in the world.

Everybody knows about Cocos Island, whether living in Bangalor, India or Bangor, Maine, the great cities of Europe or the Outback of Australia.

Say what? You've never heard of it? Well, probably you know it by its other name: Jurassic Park. That's what writer Michael Crichton called this remote island, which he used as its setting.

Or, maybe, when you were first learning to read, you knew it as Treasure Island.

130 years before there was a Captain Jack Sparrow, another famous pirate, Long John Silver, captured the imagination of readers around the world, including Walt Disney. Some folks think Cocos inspired that Robert Lewis Stevenson classic.

However, setting aside tall tales, this little island was a popular Costa Rica hideout for real pirates. Well off the sailing lanes of the English pirate hunting fleets, it offered a safe sanctuary and an abundance of coconuts, a favorite ingredient in pirate brew.

It also proved to be a great place to bury treasure and, indeed, even to this day, two fabulous booties, the Devonshire and Lima Treasures, may still be hidden there.

Cocos Island is considered by many divers the best place on the planet for viewing large marine animals.

There is an incredible variety of fish and marine mammals, from sharks to barracuda, and everything in between, not to mention porpoises and whales, in its fertile waters.

Marine turtles have been roaming the oceans since the age of dinosaurs. Imagine T Rex preying on them 200 million years ago when they landed ashore to lay their eggs.

These ancient beings swim all the oceans of the world except the Arctic and Antarctic.

Once, the populations of the half dozen species of sea turtles were so massive that lost sailors found land by listening for sea turtles paddling towards nesting grounds.

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