Sea Turtles

[Midnight]

Sea turtles

By David Dudenhoefer
Friday, July 4, 2008



(LifeWire) - While some people dedicate their summer nights to cookouts and fireworks, tourists on Costa Rica's northern Caribbean coast stroll the palm-lined beach of Tortuguero National Park to witness a more natural ritual ? the annual nesting of green sea turtles. They don't need to walk far on the starlit strand to be dazzled by the sheer number of turtles emerging from the dark waters to drag themselves up the beach and lay their eggs.

Getty Images/Jeff Hunter

As many as 150,000 bury their eggs in the sands of Tortuguero in a good year, making it one of the world's top nesting beaches for the endangered green turtle. Four times as many green turtles now nest in Tortuguero than did in the 1960s, when biologists from the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC), the world's oldest sea turtle conservation group, began studying the site, says David Godfrey, the group's executive director.
Tortuguero is one of many success stories in a long struggle to ensure the survival of the harmless marine reptile, which only recently faced an uncertain future.
But scientists fear that climate change could undo much of the progress made in sea turtle conservation. Global warming is linked to weather extremes, and more frequent ? and more severe ? tropical storms threaten the beaches where the reptiles lay their eggs. The melting polar ice caps could inundate those same beaches. And rising temperatures could overheat turtle nests to the point of preventing the eggs from hatching, according to Carlos Drews, the marine species coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which is based in Gland, Switzerland.
Shells and soup
Marine turtles have roamed the seas for 100 million years, but their numbers plummeted over the past two centuries as demand for their eggs, meat and shells increased. As recently as the early 1970s, canneries near nesting beaches slaughtered green turtles for soup while hunters stalked hawksbill turtles (http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/turtles/hawksbill.htm) for the global tortoise shell market.
The growing numbers of nesting turtles on beaches such as Tortuguero are the fruit of decades of conservation work, Godfrey says. The 1973 U.S. Endangered Species Act and the global Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which took effect in 1975, put an end to the large-scale trade in tortoise shells and meat. Subsequent legislation and conservation efforts have protected nesting beaches and sought to lower accidental deaths from turtles getting caught in fishing lines and nets.
"It takes between 25 and 40 years for a turtle hatchling to reach sexual maturity, so the increase in nesting turtles that we are now seeing is due to the hatchlings that were given a chance back in the '70s," Godfrey says.





Although turtle eggs and meat are still eaten in tropical countries, rangers and volunteers from organizations such as the CCC, which is headquartered in Gainesville, Florida, increasingly patrol nesting beaches to protect turtles and their eggs from poachers, from Costa Rica to Malaysia to Brazil.
"We've learned that conservation works. It takes time, but it works," Godfrey says. "Saving turtles is a marathon, not a sprint."
Nevertheless, conservationists worry that climate change could undo the gains eked out over the years.
Threatened hatch
Rising temperatures from global warming are a major threat, Drews warns. Beach temperature during egg incubation determines turtle sex ratios, with higher temperatures producing more females. "If the temperature is higher than 32 degrees Celsius (90 F), nests produce only female turtles, and if the temperature is higher than 34 degrees Celsius (93 F), the eggs don't hatch," he says.
A recent study at a Florida nesting beach found that all the turtle hatchlings were female, he says, while on Costa Rica's Playa Grande, the sand was so hot between January and March of this year that turtle eggs buried there stopped hatching.
Mary Adele Donnelly, the CCC's director of international policy, cites similar reports of failed hatches from high temperatures on Malaysian beaches as well. There were also reports of intense rains flooding the beaches of some Australian islands, causing the eggs to rot, she says.
Marine scientists are now searching for ways to help sea turtles survive on a warmer planet. Drews cites a project on the Costa Rican beach of Junquillal in which the WWF works with local volunteers to move turtle eggs into a shaded hatchery, where scientists can cool the sand with water if it gets too hot. They are also replanting beach vegetation to give the turtles shady areas to lay their eggs.
"Sea turtles are incredible animals that we are lucky enough to be able to interact with. But the actions of all of us will affect their fate, and the fate of all animals," Donnelly says. "We can't let the next generation fix this. ... We are the generation that has to deal with global warming."

[Bandanna]

i've always wanted to be a turtle rescuer.... I love turtles all of them as you know. (even the snapper SES )

thanks for the new article.. i hope we can save them... who really needs to eat a turtle? though I've seen it on menus when I've browsed epicurious and they show southern/particularly new orleans menus.

[paulpeter]

"Another major threat to sea turtles is the black market trade in eggs and meat. This is a pervasive problem throughout the world, but especially a concern in the Philippines, India, Indonesia and throughout the coastal nations of Latin America. Estimates are as high as 35,000 turtles killed a year in Mexico and the same number in Nicaragua. Conservationists in Mexico and the United States have launched "Don't Eat Sea Turtle" campaigns in order to reduce the urban black market trade in sea turtle products. These campaigns have involved figures such as Pope John Paul II, Dorismar, Los Tigres del Norte and Mana. Sea turtles are often consumed during the Catholic holiday, Lent, even though they are reptiles, not fish. Conservation organizations have written letters to the Pope asking that he declare turtles meat. "

[SquirrelFactor]

I spent many a vacation visting oceaniums, love to look at sealife. Here is a photo I have in my files of a Sea turtle. My mother for over 30 years has worked with land turtles, and tortoises recueing them, and rehabbing them, though they are not legal to release once they have spend time in captivity. She then kept most as pets for amny years, and they layed eggs and ended up with lots of box turtles at one time. Now in her late 70's she still have some Russian Tortoises, having gotten them from an exchange of tortoises between Russia through The Turtle and Tortoise Society, back when that Country opened up to the west.

[Midnight]

I think that they are beautiful..I do have a question about the sea turtle..Why do they have what looks to me like one claw on each fin? We have a large one that hanges out between our house and the one next door..
I have heard that they bring you luck if they live with you..

Paulpeter its nice to have you with us..Please tell us a little about yourself..Do you have any pets?? Welcome let me know if I can help you with anything..

[SquirrelFactor]

Mid, I known you didn't mean sea turtle that hangs out between you and your neighbors house, that I got, but is it a water turtle, box turtle? Box turtles or rounder on top, and can pull all thee way in so not even their noses peak out. Water turtles can pull in, but not completely, and have flatter and broader shells. Having a box turtle around they like to eat the slugs and snails and just about any bug they can get their jaws on. Nice creaper controllers!

[Midnight]

Originally Posted by SquirrelFactor

Mid, I known you didn't mean sea turtle that hangs out between you and your neighbors house, that I got, but is it a water turtle, box turtle? Box turtles or rounder on top, and can pull all thee way in so not even their noses peak out. Water turtles can pull in, but not completely, and have flatter and broader shells. Having a box turtle around they like to eat the slugs and snails and just about any bug they can get their jaws on. Nice creaper controllers!

Oh yes its a box turtle..But look at the picture of the Sea Turtle why does it have that claw ? Do you known?

[SquirrelFactor]

It looks llke a spur, perhaps for digging their nest on the beach? Again that is a guess, but I think it may be what it is for.