by Robin Clegg

Monday 4 December
The crew and I arrive a day before TV presenter Dermot O'Leary - our celebrity for this trip. It's just as well, as it takes quite a few hours before customs agree to let our 30 pieces of luggage and film equipment into Costa Rica, a small Central American country home to just four million people.

Tuesday 5 December
We visit a wooden school house in the jungle, where children from a small village, Junquillal, are being taught by WWF employee Valerie about the plight of the leatherback turtle.

Junquillal is located next to palm tree lined golden sands and the Pacific Ocean. To make learning more fun for the children, who range in age from five to 10, they are taken to the beach and under the shade of the coconut trees they paint pictures of turtles. If they learn how fragile the species is, then if the leatherback is still around when the children are grown up, it is hoped they will do everything they can to increase its numbers.

Indeed, with WWF funding, its villagers have taken up the cause of the leatherback and are doing everything they can to help protect it.

It turns out that Dermot missed his flight from Gatwick and our tight schedule looks set to be squeezed even more. Every day, tapes of the day's filming are rushed to London to be edited because the film is being aired on ITV just two days after our return to the UK.

Wednesday 6 December
There is a loud knock on my door at around 2am, which signals it's time for the start of our turtle watch in a national park ranger station near a beach called Playa Grande. We want to film this amazing prehistoric creature coming ashore to dig a nest in which it will lay eggs. Rangers patrol 4km of beach every night looking for female leatherbacks. Until recently this unspoilt area was plundered by poachers who steal eggs and sell them as delicacies to bars and restaurants. They are swallowed with chilli sauce in the misguided belief that they make men more virile. We wait at the HQ until dawn but sadly no turtles are spotted by the team on the beach. This comes as little surprise as, in fewer than 20 years, the region has seen an unbelievable 97% decline in leatherback numbers.

Later in the day Dermot arrives and is thrown straight into the thick of it by joining us for our second evening vigil waiting to see if any leatherbacks come to the beach tonight. After less than an hour we get a call that one has come ashore about a kilometre away, so the crew rushes into action.

The moon is full, so the beach and the turtle are really well illuminated. When we meet the wardens we take care not to disturb this amazing creature as it begins to dig a nest with its powerful back flippers. The wardens help secure the sides of the nest as it keeps collapsing owing to the dry sand. On the fourth attempt the turtle is satisfied that her nest is secure and deep enough to lay her eggs. At this point she seems to go into a trance, allowing us to step in and begin filming Dermot and Carlos from WWF-Costa Rica watching this increasingly rare process. Until this point we had been using an infra-red camera so the turtle didn't become startled. One of the reasons why the turtle has become so endangered is because of light pollution near the beach. The lights confuse and disorientate the turtle to the point that they go back out to sea rather than nest.

After our turtle has covered her nest with sand and returned to the sea, everyone is speechless at the wondrous sight they have experienced.

Thursday 7 December
We return to Junquillal to film more scenes of Valerie, from WWF-Costa Rica, teaching children about turtles. Baby olive ridley turtles are handed to Dermot and the children who release them on the beach. Sadly only about one in 50 survives, but following them down to the shore increases their chance of survival as at this point they are vulnerable to predators such as dogs and vultures. They are washed away by the surf and swim out to begin their lives at sea. In years to come the female turtles will instinctively return to this very beach when they are ready to lay eggs, but the males spend their entire lives in the sea. As night falls, we go out on patrol with some Junquillal villagers who have set up a community action group, funded by WWF, to protect the turtle nests from poachers. Only a few years ago nearly all the eggs from this area were stolen, but thanks to these efforts this has been completely eradicated. Carlos and Dermot and the patrollers stumble upon a vulnerable nest located too close to the shore. They move it to a safe location higher up the beach so the tide doesn't wash it away.

Friday 8 December
We sail out 50km to meet fisherman at work and discuss different methods that can minimise the number of turtle deaths. Thousands of leatherbacks are killed every year by discarded fishing gear and long-line fishing, so WWF is promoting the use of many innovative solutions to these problems - including devices to allow turtles to escape from fishing nets and special hooks that dramatically reduce the number of turtle deaths. These fishermen are trying out the new methods and when they draw in their lines we are all thankful that no turtles have been hooked on this occasion. It takes about four hours to get back to shore and everyone is glad to be back on dry land as the sea was quite rough at times. One wave damaged Sean the soundman's equipment but thankfully nobody was sick!

Saturday 9 December
Dermot and the film crew go out on a boat to film some underwater sequences off an island near where we are staying. The visibility is not so good today but the filming goes well as do the beach shots of Dermot and Carlos later in the afternoon. As places on the boat are limited I go in search of other marine life and come across a humpback whale and its calf, a pod of dolphins and a sea snake.

Sunday 10 December
Early morning filming of the coastline from a helicopter shows how stretches of this beautiful coastline are being ruined by overdevelopment. It clearly illustrates how the light pollution from hotels and holiday homes built right next to the beach has made turtle nesting less frequent. One local told me she found a turtle wandering around a car park after becoming confused as to where the beach ended, because of the lights.

In the afternoon we visit a traditional bar where turtle eggs are openly sold. It is amazing to think that some people still consider these rare eggs a delicacy that will increase their sex drive. They are swallowed down in one go with hot sauce mixed with ketchup. We are all disgusted that such an activity still goes on, but the locals don't know any different. While filming, Dermot is offered an egg as an accompaniment to a beer but refuses - this could have been a baby turtle beginning its life at sea instead of a bar room delicacy.

Monday 11 December
It's time to head back to cold and wet Britain. As I leave, I hope that when the baby turtles we released are old enough to lay eggs on the beach in Junquillal their species will have been taken off the critically endangered list.

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Recce Diary

by Sara McClintock

Monday 4 September
Start at 4am to drive to Ostional beach, a national park with a very strong community association. We see incredible numbers of Olive Ridley turtles nesting. The beach is absolutely covered and looks like a ploughed field because of the turtle tracks. Endemol is clearly very moved and excited about this. Ostional is the only beach in the area where there are short periods when the local community is allowed to gather eggs. This is because there are such great numbers of turtles nesting here, so the population is very sustainable.

After breakfast with the head of the national park we make the three hour drive to Cuajiniquil to meet the fishing community and understand more about Alvaro's project, which has three focuses:

• Replacement of j-hooks with circle hooks;
• trained WWF observers going out on fishing boats; and
• fishermen learning how to release turtles caught on longlines

We spend a long time talking to Manuel, the man in charge of the fishing fleet which comprises 20 boats and we're working with four of them. The meeting goes well and he's very supportive and willing to help. We hope this sequence will be a major part of the filming.

Tuesday 5 September
Valerie facilitates visits with the local community. We meet a family who hosted one of the overseas volunteers working on the WWF project and a woman who talks about when there used to be lots of leatherbacks nesting at Junquillal. She also shows us turtle eggs which her father had been given, and how to eat them.

In the evening we accompany six locals on their nightly beach patrols. The idea is to find and move the nest before a poacher can steal the eggs. This is a very hands-on part of the project.

All the patrollers have WWF-branded t-shirts. In fact, they earn them and are very proud to wear them. Once they've passed the training they are presented with a t-shirt.

Another filming idea discussed is to have local children release the baby turtles. Gabriel and Valerie are both on board to facilitate this.

Wednesday 6 September
Visit Playa Grande in the morning to discuss terms for filming the leatherback nesting. The major problem is that film crews are last in line to see the turtles, with priority going to tourists. Playa Grande is a national park and Roger, the ranger in charge, isn't available to see us.

Although WWF doesn't have a project on this beach, it was used as a case study in the Money Talks report which states that the local community would lose US$2.1 million if the turtles disappeared.

Travel to Flamingo to see the boat which would be used to take the celeb and team out for the fishing sequence.

Thursday 7 September
I spend the day in the WWF Central America office where I explain the concept of the Endemol project to various communications and project staff.