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.