Ingo Arndt's Image

Ingo was in Costa Rica for three weeks, but the conditions he needed – an arribada (a mass arrival of turtles) and enough light to capture the spectacle – only combined on one night. Tracing their paths with a four-second exposure in the dim blue of the night, he portrayed hundreds of turtles dragging themselves up the sand.

The greatest arribadas occur in the rainy season, often on the darkest nights, a few days before a new moon. Hundreds of thousands of female olive ridley turtles haul themselves up their natal beaches to dig nests in the sand and lay their eggs. A million eggs can be laid on the beaches of this reserve each year.