Nesting turtles give clues on oil spill's impact
June 01, 201, / Associated Press
PADRE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE, TEXAS - Nearly hidden by brownish sand, the Kemps ridley sea turtle digging furiously with her back flippers as she carved out a flask-shaped hole to lay her eggs wasn't aware of the excitement she was generating among the scientists, volunteers and beach-goers watching from a distance.
They included Donna Shaver, who has been working for more than two decades to save the endangered reptiles. Each spring, she counts their nests and collects the eggs for safe incubation before releasing the turtles' tiny offspring into the sea. Shaver knows this year that each nest she spots has added significance: the turtle that created it survived the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
While scientists in several states are studying the effects of the oil spill on loggerhead and other sea turtles, the Kemps ridley have been of particular concern. The Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010 happened when they typically would have been in the area. Most of the 456 visibly oiled turtles rescued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last year were Kemps ridleys.
At the peak of nesting season, their numbers looked good. As of May 24, 155 Kemps ridley nests had been spotted on Texas shores - more than in all of last year and more than had been counted by that day in 2009 and 2008. The same is true for some other sea turtle species, although they have just started to nest so it might be too early to have confidence in those numbers.
And because sea turtles don't reach reproductive age for at least a decade, the full effects of the oi spill might not be known for years.
"There is fear that some of the turtles that took the year off from nesting or after the turtles were done nesting during the 2010 year, that they entered the waters where the oil had been present," said Shaver, explaining that the reptiles often forage off the hard-hit Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi coasts before or after nesting along the Texas Gulf Coast.
"There is concern that perhaps those turtles have been impacted from the oil and could then have problems with their reproduction," she added.
The nesting season has long been used to estimate the size of sea turtle populations, and recovery plans for species are based on numbers tallied when females come ashore to lay their eggs. The goal for the Kemps ridleys is to have 10,000 nesters a season by 2020. At that point, the smallest and most endangered sea turtle, could be upgraded to threatened.
Shaver and her volunteers have patrolled the Texas beaches since 1980, driving SUVs and all-terrain vehicles through heat and humidity to collect turtle eggs in plastic foam boxes and bring them to the National Park Service's lab at Padre Island National Seashore. When hatching begins, Shaver sleeps on a cot in her office, caring for the tiny turtles as though they were her babies, making sure to release them into the sea at exactly the right moment.
The turtles' population has long been on the path to recovery. Monitored incubation protects the eggs from coyotes, raccoons, fire ants, vultures and other predators, and netting covering the silver-dollar-sized hatchlings as they make their way from the beach to the water keeps them safe from birds. Only after they reach the water are the tiny turtles left to contend with the elements on their own.
The program has been so successful, some believed the 2020 goal could be reached early.
And so, the oil spill and its potential effects have been even more heart-wrenching. Shaver worries a severe drought that has dried Texas' sand and made turtle tracks disappear quickly will make it more difficult for her and her helpers to find and protect this year's eggs. She thinks about whether oil contamination may decrease survival rates for the hatchlings.
To get an idea of what may come, scientists are collecting extra information this year. Along with counting nests, they're gathering blood from nesting females and tissue samples from dead embryos and sampling hatchlings to see whether oil contamination is being passed from mother to offspring. Toxicologists and contaminant experts will help biologists analyze the information.
Scientists also are keeping tabs on the turtles' habitat, noting that if the crabs or herring they consume are irreparably harmed by the oil, it will in turn hurt the turtles.
Blair Witherington, a marine biologist and sea turtle expert with the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in Florida, noted such effects are sometimes so subtle that they go undetected for years. In the Chesapeake Bay, for example, the horseshoe crab population has been so severely depleted that loggerhead turtles now eat fish dumped overboard by shrimp trawlers and other fishing boats - a diet biologists believe is less nutritious and slowing growth, he said.
"We don't know though what the long-term impact of the oil will be," Witherington said.
While scientists are collecting information on nesting turtles, they said it's difficult to assess the total population because the animals are difficult to track at sea and some of them, such as juveniles, rarely come ashore.
"It takes 20 years for them to reach sexual maturity. It may take that long to determine whether the population has been affected," said Roger Zimmerman, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory in Galveston. "Unfortunately, future scientists may be making those determinations."
The oil-covered turtles found last year were cleaned and rehabilitated. A group of some 30 young ones was released off a boat in late May in an area about 50 nautical miles south of Venice, La. - right around where they were found swimming in oil, Witherington said. Others are still being cared for.
Andre Landry, director of the Sea Turtle and Fisheries Ecology Research Lab at Texas A&M in Galveston, worries about the juveniles he knows were foraging, living and playing in Grand Isle, La., just as oil was washing ashore.
Their fate has yet to be determined - or researched.
"It's a void," Landry said.
Showing posts with label marine turtles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marine turtles. Show all posts
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Forecasting Turtles- Climate appears to play key role in determining sea turtle numbers (Via Herp Digest)
Forecasting Turtles- Climate appears to play key role in determining sea turtle numbers
by David Malakoff April 29, 2011 based on paper cited below.
A complex conservation problem just got even more complicated. A new study finds that shifting climate and ocean conditions appear to have played a dominant role in recent worldwide declines of endangered loggerhead sea turtles. The conclusion suggests that efforts to protect nesting beaches and keep turtles out of fishing nets will be just part of the solution to saving turtles. But the study also finds that future ocean climate shifts might bring good news for turtles living in the Atlantic Ocean.
"The long-term variability of marine turtle populations remains poorly understood, limiting science and management," Kyle S. Van Houtan of the U.S. government's Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center in Hawaii and John M. Halley of the University of Ioannina in Greece note in PLoS One. Although many loggerhead populations appear to have crashed in recent decades, for instance, the reasons weren't clear. But some researchers suspected that large-scale climate oscillations might be playing a role - especially because the turtle declines often paralleled fisheries crashes that have been linked to periodic, decade-long swings in ocean currents and water temperatures.
To test that idea, Van Houtan and Halley compared climate records from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to key indicators of turtle population health, including the number of nests found on beaches in Japan and Florida. The past pattern was clear: Turtle populations in the North Pacific and Northwest Atlantic were "strongly correlated to ocean conditions - such that climate models alone explain up to 88% of the observed changes over the past several decades." Sea surface temperatures, for instance, are often closely correlated with nesting numbers, and ocean conditions also appear to play a big role in determining the survival of juvenile turtles, which tend to aggregate in open ocean "hotspots." In years when prey is scarce, many of these young turtle die - meaning they aren't around to reproduce decades later, when they reach sexual maturity. Indeed, it appears that "climatic factors in the hatching year are the single most important variable" in determining turtle populati!
ons.
The researchers also examined what future climate changes might mean for the turtles, and found a mixed forecast. The news isn't very good in the Pacific: "Available climatic data suggests the Pacific population will be significantly reduced by 2040," they write. In the Atlantic, however, the "population may increase substantially" due to favorable shifts.
The results "do not exonerate" so-called "top-down" human impacts, such turtles killed in fishing nets and nesting-beach destruction, the authors conclude. But they do highlight the significance of "bottom-up oceanographic processes" in shaping populations. And climate models, they add, "provide new insights into the historical, current, and future populations of marine turtles" that could help conservationists figure out the best ways of helping this ancient species survive. - David Malakoff April 29, 2011
Source: Van Houtan, K., & Halley, J. (2011). Long-Term Climate Forcing in Loggerhead Sea Turtle Nesting. PLoS ONE, 6 (4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019043
by David Malakoff April 29, 2011 based on paper cited below.
A complex conservation problem just got even more complicated. A new study finds that shifting climate and ocean conditions appear to have played a dominant role in recent worldwide declines of endangered loggerhead sea turtles. The conclusion suggests that efforts to protect nesting beaches and keep turtles out of fishing nets will be just part of the solution to saving turtles. But the study also finds that future ocean climate shifts might bring good news for turtles living in the Atlantic Ocean.
"The long-term variability of marine turtle populations remains poorly understood, limiting science and management," Kyle S. Van Houtan of the U.S. government's Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center in Hawaii and John M. Halley of the University of Ioannina in Greece note in PLoS One. Although many loggerhead populations appear to have crashed in recent decades, for instance, the reasons weren't clear. But some researchers suspected that large-scale climate oscillations might be playing a role - especially because the turtle declines often paralleled fisheries crashes that have been linked to periodic, decade-long swings in ocean currents and water temperatures.
To test that idea, Van Houtan and Halley compared climate records from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to key indicators of turtle population health, including the number of nests found on beaches in Japan and Florida. The past pattern was clear: Turtle populations in the North Pacific and Northwest Atlantic were "strongly correlated to ocean conditions - such that climate models alone explain up to 88% of the observed changes over the past several decades." Sea surface temperatures, for instance, are often closely correlated with nesting numbers, and ocean conditions also appear to play a big role in determining the survival of juvenile turtles, which tend to aggregate in open ocean "hotspots." In years when prey is scarce, many of these young turtle die - meaning they aren't around to reproduce decades later, when they reach sexual maturity. Indeed, it appears that "climatic factors in the hatching year are the single most important variable" in determining turtle populati!
ons.
The researchers also examined what future climate changes might mean for the turtles, and found a mixed forecast. The news isn't very good in the Pacific: "Available climatic data suggests the Pacific population will be significantly reduced by 2040," they write. In the Atlantic, however, the "population may increase substantially" due to favorable shifts.
The results "do not exonerate" so-called "top-down" human impacts, such turtles killed in fishing nets and nesting-beach destruction, the authors conclude. But they do highlight the significance of "bottom-up oceanographic processes" in shaping populations. And climate models, they add, "provide new insights into the historical, current, and future populations of marine turtles" that could help conservationists figure out the best ways of helping this ancient species survive. - David Malakoff April 29, 2011
Source: Van Houtan, K., & Halley, J. (2011). Long-Term Climate Forcing in Loggerhead Sea Turtle Nesting. PLoS ONE, 6 (4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019043
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Africa's Sea Turtles Need Passports for Protection (Via HerpDigest)
Africa's Sea Turtles Need Passports for Protection
Olive ridley sea turtles nest in Gabon but spend most of their time
in waters off Republic of Congo
To protect these transnational sea turtles, scientists from Wildlife Conservation Society and others recommended the region's first international marine park
Press Release, WCS, NEW YORK (May 11, 2011)- Satellite tracking of olive ridley sea turtles off the coast of Central Africa has revealed that existing protected areas may be inadequate to safeguard turtles from fishing nets, according to scientists with the University of California-Santa Cruz, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Exeter, and others. Scientists involved in the study recommended the extension of an international marine park that spans the waters of Gabon and the Republic of Congo and better international cooperation to manage this threatened species.
The study was published May 11 in the online journal PLoS ONE. The authors of the study include: Sara M. Maxwell, Greg A. Breed, Barry A. Nickel, and Daniel P. Costa of the University of California-Santa Cruz; Junior Makanga-Bahouna, Edgard Pemo-Makaya, Richard Parnell, and Angela Formia of the Wildlife Conservation Society; Solange Ngouessono of the Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux, Libreville, Gabon; Brendan J. Godley, Matthew J. Witt of the University of Exeter; and Michael S. Coyne of the University of Exeter and SEATURTLE.org.
First author Sara Maxwell, who led the study as a graduate student at University of California Santa Cruz, said it provides novel insights into the movements of olive ridleys and how to better protect them.
"Thousands of olive ridley sea turtles are caught every year in fishing nets along the coast of Central Africa, yet we previously had no understanding of their movements or what areas are critical to protect their populations," said Maxwell, now a postdoctoral fellow with Marine Conservation Institute.
In the first comprehensive tracking study of olive ridley sea turtles during the nesting season, the authors used satellite transmitters to follow 18 female turtles during their journeys ashore to lay eggs. The nesting season brings the turtles closest to the coastline and to the danger of being captured in fishing nets.
Turtles were tagged in Mayumba National Park, a 900-square-kilometer marine protected area on the southern coast of Gabon. Mayumba National Park and Conkouati-Douli National Park just across the border in the Republic of Congo were created to protect both olive ridley and leatherback sea turtles from fishing nets, but dozens of dead olive ridley sea turtles have continued to wash up on the shores of the park every year. These deaths have perplexed park managers and resulted in mounting concern about the health of this threatened species.
"What we found, however, made sense. Turtles were regularly moving outside of the park boundaries where we believe they were encountering fishing nets and drowning, and later washing ashore where we would see them," said Angela Formia of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Ocean Giants Program.
The study revealed another critical finding: the tagged turtles spent more than half of their time in the Republic of Congo waters, highlighting the need for international cooperation to protect this species. The Wildlife Conservation Society is now working in conjunction with the national park agencies of both countries to join and expand Mayumba and Conkouati-Douli National Parks, creating what is the first international marine park in this region of the world.
"The proposal to combine and extend the protected areas will be incredibly effective," said coauthor Brendan Godley, professor at University of Exeter Cornwall and coordinator of the Marine Turtle Research Group. "We estimate that 97 percent of the most critical habitat for this population of olive ridley sea turtles would fall within the expanded park boundaries."
"Our results clearly provide a solid foundation for the implementation and extension of the transboundary marine protected area," said coauthor Michael Coyne, director of the non-profit SEATURTLE.ORG, which hosts a website where the sea turtles can be followed online by the public.
Studies such as this one highlight the critical importance of international cooperation in managing and protecting long-lived and migratory species such as sea turtles. This work also demonstrates the power of satellite tracking technology to show where animals are going and how to better protect them.
Coauthor Dan Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said, "This is a great example of how innovative science on the ecological needs of wide-ranging, long-lived marine species can help justify regional collaborations for effective conservation."
This study was made possible through funding and support of the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, the UK Darwin Initiative, the Tagging of Pacific Predators Project, UC Santa Cruz Center for Integrated Spatial Research, SEATURTLE.ORG, and the Gabon Sea Turtle Partnership, which is funded by the Marine Turtle Conservation Fund (United States Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior).
The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild places worldwide. We do so through science, global conservation, education and the management of the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo. Together these activities change attitudes towards nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans living in harmony. WCS is committed to this mission because it is essential to the integrity of life on Earth. Visit www.wcs.org.
Exeter is a leading UK university and in the top one percent of institutions globally. It combines world class research with very high levels of student satisfaction. Exeter is ranked 12th in the Times league table and was the 2007/08 Times Higher Education University of the Year. It was recently named as one of Europe's fastest growing companies in a list compiled by Dun & Bradstreet. It is also in the top ten in the UK for student satisfaction in the 2010 National Student Survey.
The Gabon Sea Turtle Partnership (Partenariat pour les Tortues Marines du Gabon) is a network of Gabonese and international partners dedicated synergistically toward the common goal of protecting Gabon's sea turtles for generations to come. The Partnership consists of and coordinates with multiple governmental and non-governmental organisations in Gabon and is funded primarily by the Marine Turtle Conservation Fund (United States Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior). Visit www.seaturtle.org/groups/gabon/home.html.
CONTACT: JOHN DELANEY (1-718-220-3275; jdelaney@wcs.org)
or STEPHEN SAUTNER (1-718-220-3682; ssautner@wcs.org)
Olive ridley sea turtles nest in Gabon but spend most of their time
in waters off Republic of Congo
To protect these transnational sea turtles, scientists from Wildlife Conservation Society and others recommended the region's first international marine park
Press Release, WCS, NEW YORK (May 11, 2011)- Satellite tracking of olive ridley sea turtles off the coast of Central Africa has revealed that existing protected areas may be inadequate to safeguard turtles from fishing nets, according to scientists with the University of California-Santa Cruz, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Exeter, and others. Scientists involved in the study recommended the extension of an international marine park that spans the waters of Gabon and the Republic of Congo and better international cooperation to manage this threatened species.
The study was published May 11 in the online journal PLoS ONE. The authors of the study include: Sara M. Maxwell, Greg A. Breed, Barry A. Nickel, and Daniel P. Costa of the University of California-Santa Cruz; Junior Makanga-Bahouna, Edgard Pemo-Makaya, Richard Parnell, and Angela Formia of the Wildlife Conservation Society; Solange Ngouessono of the Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux, Libreville, Gabon; Brendan J. Godley, Matthew J. Witt of the University of Exeter; and Michael S. Coyne of the University of Exeter and SEATURTLE.org.
First author Sara Maxwell, who led the study as a graduate student at University of California Santa Cruz, said it provides novel insights into the movements of olive ridleys and how to better protect them.
"Thousands of olive ridley sea turtles are caught every year in fishing nets along the coast of Central Africa, yet we previously had no understanding of their movements or what areas are critical to protect their populations," said Maxwell, now a postdoctoral fellow with Marine Conservation Institute.
In the first comprehensive tracking study of olive ridley sea turtles during the nesting season, the authors used satellite transmitters to follow 18 female turtles during their journeys ashore to lay eggs. The nesting season brings the turtles closest to the coastline and to the danger of being captured in fishing nets.
Turtles were tagged in Mayumba National Park, a 900-square-kilometer marine protected area on the southern coast of Gabon. Mayumba National Park and Conkouati-Douli National Park just across the border in the Republic of Congo were created to protect both olive ridley and leatherback sea turtles from fishing nets, but dozens of dead olive ridley sea turtles have continued to wash up on the shores of the park every year. These deaths have perplexed park managers and resulted in mounting concern about the health of this threatened species.
"What we found, however, made sense. Turtles were regularly moving outside of the park boundaries where we believe they were encountering fishing nets and drowning, and later washing ashore where we would see them," said Angela Formia of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Ocean Giants Program.
The study revealed another critical finding: the tagged turtles spent more than half of their time in the Republic of Congo waters, highlighting the need for international cooperation to protect this species. The Wildlife Conservation Society is now working in conjunction with the national park agencies of both countries to join and expand Mayumba and Conkouati-Douli National Parks, creating what is the first international marine park in this region of the world.
"The proposal to combine and extend the protected areas will be incredibly effective," said coauthor Brendan Godley, professor at University of Exeter Cornwall and coordinator of the Marine Turtle Research Group. "We estimate that 97 percent of the most critical habitat for this population of olive ridley sea turtles would fall within the expanded park boundaries."
"Our results clearly provide a solid foundation for the implementation and extension of the transboundary marine protected area," said coauthor Michael Coyne, director of the non-profit SEATURTLE.ORG, which hosts a website where the sea turtles can be followed online by the public.
Studies such as this one highlight the critical importance of international cooperation in managing and protecting long-lived and migratory species such as sea turtles. This work also demonstrates the power of satellite tracking technology to show where animals are going and how to better protect them.
Coauthor Dan Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said, "This is a great example of how innovative science on the ecological needs of wide-ranging, long-lived marine species can help justify regional collaborations for effective conservation."
This study was made possible through funding and support of the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, the UK Darwin Initiative, the Tagging of Pacific Predators Project, UC Santa Cruz Center for Integrated Spatial Research, SEATURTLE.ORG, and the Gabon Sea Turtle Partnership, which is funded by the Marine Turtle Conservation Fund (United States Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior).
The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild places worldwide. We do so through science, global conservation, education and the management of the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo. Together these activities change attitudes towards nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans living in harmony. WCS is committed to this mission because it is essential to the integrity of life on Earth. Visit www.wcs.org.
Exeter is a leading UK university and in the top one percent of institutions globally. It combines world class research with very high levels of student satisfaction. Exeter is ranked 12th in the Times league table and was the 2007/08 Times Higher Education University of the Year. It was recently named as one of Europe's fastest growing companies in a list compiled by Dun & Bradstreet. It is also in the top ten in the UK for student satisfaction in the 2010 National Student Survey.
The Gabon Sea Turtle Partnership (Partenariat pour les Tortues Marines du Gabon) is a network of Gabonese and international partners dedicated synergistically toward the common goal of protecting Gabon's sea turtles for generations to come. The Partnership consists of and coordinates with multiple governmental and non-governmental organisations in Gabon and is funded primarily by the Marine Turtle Conservation Fund (United States Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior). Visit www.seaturtle.org/groups/gabon/home.html.
CONTACT: JOHN DELANEY (1-718-220-3275; jdelaney@wcs.org)
or STEPHEN SAUTNER (1-718-220-3682; ssautner@wcs.org)
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Florida Sea Turtles and The Impact of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (Via Herp Digest)
Florida Sea Turtles and The Impact of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
Submitted by AMANDA BRYANT, SCCF Sea Turtle Coordinator
From CaptivaSanibel.Com 2/22/11
This year's sea turtle nesting season will begin on May 1, with Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation staff and volunteers gearing up to cover island beaches.
Last year, many of us spent our spring and summer watching in horror as the Deepwater Horizon Oil rig exploded and the well it serviced pumped barrels upon barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
From April 20 until the well was capped in July, sea turtles were center stage as a poster animal for the disaster. The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) was responsible for handling the impacts on sea turtles along the Florida shoreline.
Efforts to protect sea turtles began almost immediately. These efforts included on-the-water search and rescue, documentation and collection of sea turtles stranded on or near to shore, nesting beach protection and observation during cleanup activities.
Approximately 450 sea turtles were rescued at sea, all but five alive. Less than one percent of these turtles died during rehabilitation. Releases of rehabilitated turtles into oil-free waters began as soon as the well was capped. To date, all have been released, with the exception of 40 sea turtles that are still receiving care.
On the beaches of the panhandle, Florida's only oiled beaches, emerging hatchlings faced almost certain death. The decision was made to relocate nests at 47-49 days of incubation (about one week before they would hatch) and release the hatchlings on the eastern coast of the state.
Eggs from 274 nests were carefully dug up and removed from the nest. They were placed in coolers with damp sand from the nest and transported near Cape Canaveral. The FedEx trucks used to move the eggs were temperature controlled, air-cushioned and equipped with special pallets to hold the coolers in place.
Every effort was made to reduce or eliminate unnecessarily jarring. At this stage in development, eggs are very vulnerable to movement, which can result in the death of the hatchling.
The coolers were kept in a temperature controlled facility and monitored until the nests hatched. Hatchlings were then released at night on nearby beaches.
In all, this massive undertaking unearthed and relocated 28,568 eggs and released 14,796 hatchlings. The hatch success (percentage of eggs that hatch out of the total number of eggs) for relocated nests matched that of nests left to hatch without assistance.
(Bryant recently attended the Florida Marine Turtle Permit Holders Annual Meeting, where these figures were released.)
Submitted by AMANDA BRYANT, SCCF Sea Turtle Coordinator
From CaptivaSanibel.Com 2/22/11
This year's sea turtle nesting season will begin on May 1, with Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation staff and volunteers gearing up to cover island beaches.
Last year, many of us spent our spring and summer watching in horror as the Deepwater Horizon Oil rig exploded and the well it serviced pumped barrels upon barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
From April 20 until the well was capped in July, sea turtles were center stage as a poster animal for the disaster. The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) was responsible for handling the impacts on sea turtles along the Florida shoreline.
Efforts to protect sea turtles began almost immediately. These efforts included on-the-water search and rescue, documentation and collection of sea turtles stranded on or near to shore, nesting beach protection and observation during cleanup activities.
Approximately 450 sea turtles were rescued at sea, all but five alive. Less than one percent of these turtles died during rehabilitation. Releases of rehabilitated turtles into oil-free waters began as soon as the well was capped. To date, all have been released, with the exception of 40 sea turtles that are still receiving care.
On the beaches of the panhandle, Florida's only oiled beaches, emerging hatchlings faced almost certain death. The decision was made to relocate nests at 47-49 days of incubation (about one week before they would hatch) and release the hatchlings on the eastern coast of the state.
Eggs from 274 nests were carefully dug up and removed from the nest. They were placed in coolers with damp sand from the nest and transported near Cape Canaveral. The FedEx trucks used to move the eggs were temperature controlled, air-cushioned and equipped with special pallets to hold the coolers in place.
Every effort was made to reduce or eliminate unnecessarily jarring. At this stage in development, eggs are very vulnerable to movement, which can result in the death of the hatchling.
The coolers were kept in a temperature controlled facility and monitored until the nests hatched. Hatchlings were then released at night on nearby beaches.
In all, this massive undertaking unearthed and relocated 28,568 eggs and released 14,796 hatchlings. The hatch success (percentage of eggs that hatch out of the total number of eggs) for relocated nests matched that of nests left to hatch without assistance.
(Bryant recently attended the Florida Marine Turtle Permit Holders Annual Meeting, where these figures were released.)
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Oil in Gulf of Mexico (Via Herp Digest)
Oil in Gulf of Mexico: Biologists Cite Need for Critical Data to Determine Ecological Consequences
ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2011) - Twenty years after biologists attempted to determine the ecological damages to marine life from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, scientists dealing with the BP disaster find themselves with the same problem: the lack of critical data to determine the ecological consequences of human-induced environmental disasters, a University of Florida researcher said.
Writing in the Feb. 4 issue of the journal Science, Karen A. Bjorndal, a University of Florida biology professor and director of the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research, and other biologists said the United States needs "strategic national research plans for key marine species and ecosystems based on evaluation of cause and effect and on integrated monitoring of abundance and demographic traits."
"It is sad to see that we are in the same place now," said Bjorndal, adding that not much has changed since the Valdez oil spill when it comes to getting the data needed to assess and restore a marine ecosystem after an environmental disaster. She hopes it will provide an impetus for action.
"We know how to create these research plans -- what is needed now is the political will and leadership to do so," she wrote.
"Achieving mandated recovery goals depends on understanding both population trends and the demographic processes that drive those trends," Bjorndal's article states.
Her team argues it "is not too late to invest funds from BP to support teams of experts to develop effective strategic plans that identify, prioritize and provide methodologies for collecting essential data."
The team identified seven elements that need to be included in most of the plans.
"In the wake of the BP oil spill, the need for this policy shift is as clear as it is compelling. The largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history should provide the impetus and opportunity to effect this policy shift." Bjorndal wrote in her article.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Florida. .
Journal Reference:
K. A. Bjorndal, B. W. Bowen, M. Chaloupka, L. B. Crowder, S. S. Heppell, C. M. Jones, M. E. Lutcavage, D. Policansky, A. R. Solow, B. E. Witherington. Better Science Needed for Restoration in the Gulf of Mexico. Science, 2011; 331 (6017): 537
ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2011) - Twenty years after biologists attempted to determine the ecological damages to marine life from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, scientists dealing with the BP disaster find themselves with the same problem: the lack of critical data to determine the ecological consequences of human-induced environmental disasters, a University of Florida researcher said.
Writing in the Feb. 4 issue of the journal Science, Karen A. Bjorndal, a University of Florida biology professor and director of the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research, and other biologists said the United States needs "strategic national research plans for key marine species and ecosystems based on evaluation of cause and effect and on integrated monitoring of abundance and demographic traits."
"It is sad to see that we are in the same place now," said Bjorndal, adding that not much has changed since the Valdez oil spill when it comes to getting the data needed to assess and restore a marine ecosystem after an environmental disaster. She hopes it will provide an impetus for action.
"We know how to create these research plans -- what is needed now is the political will and leadership to do so," she wrote.
"Achieving mandated recovery goals depends on understanding both population trends and the demographic processes that drive those trends," Bjorndal's article states.
Her team argues it "is not too late to invest funds from BP to support teams of experts to develop effective strategic plans that identify, prioritize and provide methodologies for collecting essential data."
The team identified seven elements that need to be included in most of the plans.
"In the wake of the BP oil spill, the need for this policy shift is as clear as it is compelling. The largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history should provide the impetus and opportunity to effect this policy shift." Bjorndal wrote in her article.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Florida. .
Journal Reference:
K. A. Bjorndal, B. W. Bowen, M. Chaloupka, L. B. Crowder, S. S. Heppell, C. M. Jones, M. E. Lutcavage, D. Policansky, A. R. Solow, B. E. Witherington. Better Science Needed for Restoration in the Gulf of Mexico. Science, 2011; 331 (6017): 537
Race on To Save Sea Turtles (Via Herp Digest)
Race on To Save Sea Turtles , S. Padre Island, TX
2/4/11, Valley Star, TX, by Steve Sinclair
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND - From Boca Chica beach to South Padre Island, cold-stunned sea turtles are being found by the dozens and fears are the numbers could swell by the time the cold front leaves the Rio Grande Valley.
As of noon Thursday, 100 cold-stunned sea turtles had been found. That number swelled to 330, seven of which died. Volunteers are racing the clock to save as many turtles as possible. "This is really a bad one," Sea Turtle Inc. curator Jeff George said.
"If the sea turtles are in this 20-degree temperature tonight (Thursday), they're going to die. I don't think the little ones will survive."
As many as 40 volunteers are looking for the turtles, but the U.S. Coast Guard and Texas Parks & Wildlife Department have also reported finding cold-stranded turtles.
Plans were to keep searching for more turtles until sunset on Thursday, then resuming the search this morning. Boats are also being used in the search.
All the turtles found thus far have been green sea turtles, which are an endangered species. George said the turtles range in size from 8 or 9 pounds to 100 pounds. Rescue facilities are strained. Besides Sea Turtle Inc. on the Island, turtles are being sent to the University of Texas-Pan American Coastal Studies lab on the Island and Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville. Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge also has an emergency facility available. The record number of cold-stunned sea turtles found came following a freeze in the 1980s when 300 were discovered.
According to the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission, when the water temperature drops, stunned sea turtles may float listlessly or wash onto shore. Although these turtles may appear to be dead, they are often still alive. However, in this listless condition, they are especially vulnerable to further impacts from the weather and may become prey to scavengers. George said it is critically important to find the sea turtles as soon as possible. He said the longer they remain in the listless state, their chances of recovery drop.
Sea turtle experts, including a veterinarian, are available to offer assistance.
People who find cold-stunned or dead turtles should immediately call Sea Turtle Inc., day or night, at 956-761-4511 and they will be advised of an emergency number to call.
http://www.valleymorningstar.com/sections/article/gallery/?pic=1&id=87787&db=vmstar
36 photo slide show of rescue as of 2/4/11
2/4/11, Valley Star, TX, by Steve Sinclair
SOUTH PADRE ISLAND - From Boca Chica beach to South Padre Island, cold-stunned sea turtles are being found by the dozens and fears are the numbers could swell by the time the cold front leaves the Rio Grande Valley.
As of noon Thursday, 100 cold-stunned sea turtles had been found. That number swelled to 330, seven of which died. Volunteers are racing the clock to save as many turtles as possible. "This is really a bad one," Sea Turtle Inc. curator Jeff George said.
"If the sea turtles are in this 20-degree temperature tonight (Thursday), they're going to die. I don't think the little ones will survive."
As many as 40 volunteers are looking for the turtles, but the U.S. Coast Guard and Texas Parks & Wildlife Department have also reported finding cold-stranded turtles.
Plans were to keep searching for more turtles until sunset on Thursday, then resuming the search this morning. Boats are also being used in the search.
All the turtles found thus far have been green sea turtles, which are an endangered species. George said the turtles range in size from 8 or 9 pounds to 100 pounds. Rescue facilities are strained. Besides Sea Turtle Inc. on the Island, turtles are being sent to the University of Texas-Pan American Coastal Studies lab on the Island and Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville. Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge also has an emergency facility available. The record number of cold-stunned sea turtles found came following a freeze in the 1980s when 300 were discovered.
According to the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission, when the water temperature drops, stunned sea turtles may float listlessly or wash onto shore. Although these turtles may appear to be dead, they are often still alive. However, in this listless condition, they are especially vulnerable to further impacts from the weather and may become prey to scavengers. George said it is critically important to find the sea turtles as soon as possible. He said the longer they remain in the listless state, their chances of recovery drop.
Sea turtle experts, including a veterinarian, are available to offer assistance.
People who find cold-stunned or dead turtles should immediately call Sea Turtle Inc., day or night, at 956-761-4511 and they will be advised of an emergency number to call.
http://www.valleymorningstar.com/sections/article/gallery/?pic=1&id=87787&db=vmstar
36 photo slide show of rescue as of 2/4/11
Stunned Turtles Hit Record of 1,040 (Via Herp Digest)
Stunned Turtles Hit Record of 1,040 - Volunteers Scramble to Find Places to Keep Them
By Mike Naird, Rhiannon, Valley Morning Star, TX
February 5, 2011 - CORPUS CHRISTI - Forty-two motionless turtles blanketed the floor of a bait shop along JFK Memorial Causeway.
"One that was marked dead came alive," said Kevin Weatherbee, who spent Friday and Saturday rescuing cold-stunned sea turtles, sometimes wading into chilly water along the causeway, in the largest such event since 1980.
A record-breaking 1,040 cold-stunned green sea turtles have been rescued since Thursday, topping a record set last year when 450 were found, said Donna Shaver, division chief of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery at Padre Island National Seashore.
"We're snowed under with sea turtles," she said.
So was Weatherbee.
When Texas Parks and Wildlife officials walked over the closed causeway Friday to retrieve turtles, they found the Red Dot Pier bait shop, which Weatherbee was watching for a family member, filled with them.
There were so many that he ran out of blankets and towels to wrap each one.
Because turtles are reptiles with a body temperature that fluctuates with the temperature of their environment, cold stuns the turtles. It leaves them motionless, and they float to the surface. If not found soon enough, they die.
"They're coldblooded creatures, but the water was 40.2 degrees, so cold they can't raise their heads out of the water and they drown," Weatherbee said. "It's hard not to try to help when you see these creatures in distress. It's the right thing to do."
Shaver said rescuers have been scrambling to find places to rehabilitate the turtles.
"We've had hundreds of volunteers find more turtles in two days than have been found on the Texas coast in any individual year," Shaver said.
Unlike the cold-stunning event in January 2010, many of the turtles found since Thursday are alive, and have a good chance at survival, Shaver said.
"We're working really hard and I feel optimistic at this point that we've done a really good job," Shaver said. "Those turtles are going to get back out into the wild, safe and sound, in a few weeks."
Shaver said three factors contributed to the high numbers of cold-stunned turtles: This cold snap was more severe than the one in January 2010, the juvenile green sea turtle population has been growing and volunteers have been scouring beaches for them since the cold snap started.
Some rescued turtles have been moved to Animal Rehabilitation Keep in Port Aransas to be warmed and rehabilitated. Others have been moved to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's Marine Development Center in Flour Bluff and the Texas State Aquarium.
The Port Aransas group had 42 turtles in kiddie pools Saturday, Director Tony Amos said.
"We're getting pretty full and are exploring other avenues," Amos said. "We have always taken animals when we're past capacity, and we'll find a way somehow."
Turtle tips
-- Report stranded, cold-stunned turtles immediately by calling the Padre Island National Seashore Turtle Lab at 361-949-8173, extensions 226 or 228. If calling after business hours, dial 361-851-4255.
-- Immediately remove the turtle from the wind and cold water. Try to cover it with a dry towel or blanket to prevent further damage from the wind chill. If the animal is too heavy or too difficult to reach, do not attempt to recover it alone. Wait until help arrives.
-- Do not warm the turtle too quickly, as rapidly raising its core temperature can be dangerous or fatal. Be careful not to impede the weakened turtle's ability to breathe.
-- Try to keep a log of where you found the turtle and note any identifying characteristics (barnacles, injuries, missing flipper, size) so officials can tell them apart, once recovered. Photographs also can help with the identification.
Source: Padre Island National Seashore Division of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery
By Mike Naird, Rhiannon, Valley Morning Star, TX
February 5, 2011 - CORPUS CHRISTI - Forty-two motionless turtles blanketed the floor of a bait shop along JFK Memorial Causeway.
"One that was marked dead came alive," said Kevin Weatherbee, who spent Friday and Saturday rescuing cold-stunned sea turtles, sometimes wading into chilly water along the causeway, in the largest such event since 1980.
A record-breaking 1,040 cold-stunned green sea turtles have been rescued since Thursday, topping a record set last year when 450 were found, said Donna Shaver, division chief of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery at Padre Island National Seashore.
"We're snowed under with sea turtles," she said.
So was Weatherbee.
When Texas Parks and Wildlife officials walked over the closed causeway Friday to retrieve turtles, they found the Red Dot Pier bait shop, which Weatherbee was watching for a family member, filled with them.
There were so many that he ran out of blankets and towels to wrap each one.
Because turtles are reptiles with a body temperature that fluctuates with the temperature of their environment, cold stuns the turtles. It leaves them motionless, and they float to the surface. If not found soon enough, they die.
"They're coldblooded creatures, but the water was 40.2 degrees, so cold they can't raise their heads out of the water and they drown," Weatherbee said. "It's hard not to try to help when you see these creatures in distress. It's the right thing to do."
Shaver said rescuers have been scrambling to find places to rehabilitate the turtles.
"We've had hundreds of volunteers find more turtles in two days than have been found on the Texas coast in any individual year," Shaver said.
Unlike the cold-stunning event in January 2010, many of the turtles found since Thursday are alive, and have a good chance at survival, Shaver said.
"We're working really hard and I feel optimistic at this point that we've done a really good job," Shaver said. "Those turtles are going to get back out into the wild, safe and sound, in a few weeks."
Shaver said three factors contributed to the high numbers of cold-stunned turtles: This cold snap was more severe than the one in January 2010, the juvenile green sea turtle population has been growing and volunteers have been scouring beaches for them since the cold snap started.
Some rescued turtles have been moved to Animal Rehabilitation Keep in Port Aransas to be warmed and rehabilitated. Others have been moved to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's Marine Development Center in Flour Bluff and the Texas State Aquarium.
The Port Aransas group had 42 turtles in kiddie pools Saturday, Director Tony Amos said.
"We're getting pretty full and are exploring other avenues," Amos said. "We have always taken animals when we're past capacity, and we'll find a way somehow."
Turtle tips
-- Report stranded, cold-stunned turtles immediately by calling the Padre Island National Seashore Turtle Lab at 361-949-8173, extensions 226 or 228. If calling after business hours, dial 361-851-4255.
-- Immediately remove the turtle from the wind and cold water. Try to cover it with a dry towel or blanket to prevent further damage from the wind chill. If the animal is too heavy or too difficult to reach, do not attempt to recover it alone. Wait until help arrives.
-- Do not warm the turtle too quickly, as rapidly raising its core temperature can be dangerous or fatal. Be careful not to impede the weakened turtle's ability to breathe.
-- Try to keep a log of where you found the turtle and note any identifying characteristics (barnacles, injuries, missing flipper, size) so officials can tell them apart, once recovered. Photographs also can help with the identification.
Source: Padre Island National Seashore Division of Sea Turtle Science and Recovery
Fishing Closures announced; turtle patrols begin (Via Herpdigest)
Fishing Closures announced; turtle patrols begin
February 03, 2011 Valley-Star, TX
By STEVE SINCLAIR
The powerful winter storm that has pummeled half the nation forced the closure of Rio Grande Valley fishing spots.
Texas Parks & Wildlife Department announced the closing of the Brazos-Santiago Pass South Jetty along the beach for ½ mile and out from shore for 1,000 yards, and part of Port Isabel. Also included is the area from shore out to a line from the high point of the Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge on the northwest and the end of the old causeway on the southeast, including the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway bounded by Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge on the north and Port Isabel Swing Bridge on the south. It does not include the adjacent canal in Port Isabel. Also closed is the entire harbor at Port Mansfield from the corners of the bulkheads on either side of the harbor to the harbor mouth.
There has been no announcement of plans to shut down the Rio Grande Valley's three state parks or three national wildlife refuges.
That, however, could change.
"There are no closures planned, but any decision will be made on a day-to-day basis," said Kelly McDowell, project leader for the South Texas Refuge Complex, which includes Laguna Atascosa, Santa Ana and Lower Rio Grande national wildlife refuges.
The Valley's three state parks are Resaca de la Palma in Brownsville, Estero Llano Grande in Weslaco and Bentsen-Rio Grande in Mission.
Jody Mays, a biologist at Laguna Atascosa, said ocelot trapping has been temporarily suspended because of the winter storm and all 15 traps have been pulled.
"It would be too risky putting traps out," she said. "In the wild, the cats have ways to deal with the cold but in a trap, they have limited mechanisms," she said.
Three ocelots have been trapped this season, including one on Monday. The three ocelots include two males, one of which is 14 years old, and a female, 1 to 1 ½ years old that was deemed too young to be fitted with a radio-transmitting collar.
The cold weather could take a toll on salt water fish and a TPWD release said coastal residents can report freeze-related fish kills or cold-stunned fish to the agency's law enforcement communications office at 281-842-8100 or 512-389-4848.
In addition, dozens of volunteers are patrolling the Laguna Madre for signs of cold-stunned sea turtles.
As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, none had been found, but officials expect cold-stunned to start showing up by today.
Jeff George, curator at Sea Turtle Inc. on South Padre Island, said 75 staff and volunteers are taking part in the patrols.
"We'll be particularly looking along the Laguna Madre," George said. "The Laguna Madre is only 3-feet deep and significant cold will drop the temperature significantly and turtles will not be able to take that change."
George said nearly all the turtles will be green sea turtles.
He said that if a cold-stunned turtle is found in the first 48 hours, "chances of survival are almost 100 percent."
After 72 hours, George said the survival rate is only about 10 percent.
Persons who find cold-stunned or dead turtles should immediately call Sea Turtle Inc., day or night, at 956-761-4511 and they will be advised of an emergency number to call. A veterinarian and other turtle experts will be on call.
______________________________________________________________
February 03, 2011 Valley-Star, TX
By STEVE SINCLAIR
The powerful winter storm that has pummeled half the nation forced the closure of Rio Grande Valley fishing spots.
Texas Parks & Wildlife Department announced the closing of the Brazos-Santiago Pass South Jetty along the beach for ½ mile and out from shore for 1,000 yards, and part of Port Isabel. Also included is the area from shore out to a line from the high point of the Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge on the northwest and the end of the old causeway on the southeast, including the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway bounded by Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge on the north and Port Isabel Swing Bridge on the south. It does not include the adjacent canal in Port Isabel. Also closed is the entire harbor at Port Mansfield from the corners of the bulkheads on either side of the harbor to the harbor mouth.
There has been no announcement of plans to shut down the Rio Grande Valley's three state parks or three national wildlife refuges.
That, however, could change.
"There are no closures planned, but any decision will be made on a day-to-day basis," said Kelly McDowell, project leader for the South Texas Refuge Complex, which includes Laguna Atascosa, Santa Ana and Lower Rio Grande national wildlife refuges.
The Valley's three state parks are Resaca de la Palma in Brownsville, Estero Llano Grande in Weslaco and Bentsen-Rio Grande in Mission.
Jody Mays, a biologist at Laguna Atascosa, said ocelot trapping has been temporarily suspended because of the winter storm and all 15 traps have been pulled.
"It would be too risky putting traps out," she said. "In the wild, the cats have ways to deal with the cold but in a trap, they have limited mechanisms," she said.
Three ocelots have been trapped this season, including one on Monday. The three ocelots include two males, one of which is 14 years old, and a female, 1 to 1 ½ years old that was deemed too young to be fitted with a radio-transmitting collar.
The cold weather could take a toll on salt water fish and a TPWD release said coastal residents can report freeze-related fish kills or cold-stunned fish to the agency's law enforcement communications office at 281-842-8100 or 512-389-4848.
In addition, dozens of volunteers are patrolling the Laguna Madre for signs of cold-stunned sea turtles.
As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, none had been found, but officials expect cold-stunned to start showing up by today.
Jeff George, curator at Sea Turtle Inc. on South Padre Island, said 75 staff and volunteers are taking part in the patrols.
"We'll be particularly looking along the Laguna Madre," George said. "The Laguna Madre is only 3-feet deep and significant cold will drop the temperature significantly and turtles will not be able to take that change."
George said nearly all the turtles will be green sea turtles.
He said that if a cold-stunned turtle is found in the first 48 hours, "chances of survival are almost 100 percent."
After 72 hours, George said the survival rate is only about 10 percent.
Persons who find cold-stunned or dead turtles should immediately call Sea Turtle Inc., day or night, at 956-761-4511 and they will be advised of an emergency number to call. A veterinarian and other turtle experts will be on call.
______________________________________________________________
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Rural Women in Nicaragua Lead Effort to Protect Endangered Sea Turtles (Via Herp Digest)
Rural Women in Nicaragua Lead Effort to Protect Endangered Sea Turtles
PNNOnline.org » The Nonprofit News and Information Resource 9/21/2010
Sea turtles throughout the world are increasingly threatened with extinction, yet the people who can help address this crisis are often ignored.
Last year, Dr. Sarah Otterstrom of the non-profit organization Paso Pacifico made a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to empower women and girls as environmental leaders in Central America. As a result, women in a small fishing village in Nicaragua are now the lead protectors of nesting sea turtles. They earn money for every baby sea turtle they help to hatch which successfully enters the sea.
"Women possess unique knowledge about the value of wildlife, water, and trees to society, yet they have been overlooked as guardians of nature," Dr. Otterstrom said. "Through our effort, Nicaraguan women are now the lead protagonists in protecting sea turtles from extinction. They carefully monitor incubating eggs and assist the hatchlings as they walk to the sea."
In rural Nicaragua, women have few avenues to earn income and rely on informal employment to obtain cash. In this fishing village, women bring in an average of $30 per month through activities such as selling bread and sewing clothes. The ten women participating in Paso Pacifico's program can now earn the same amount of money for protecting a single nest. The women protectors receive 35 cents per hatchling and each turtle nest has over ten dozen eggs. There are hundreds of turtles nesting on the beach each year. The women involved in this project have shown intense collaboration. Rather than individually receiving funds for each protected sea turtle, they opted to pool the money they earn and equally distribute it across their group of sea turtle protectors.
"Nurturing baby sea turtles is very rewarding," sea turtle protector Carolina Coronado explains. "After a sea turtle nests at night, we carefully move the nests to a hatchery we have built and where we protect the nests from poachers and livestock. When the baby turtles hatch, we count them and feel fulfilled as we watch them crawl to the ocean."
Paso Pacifico's CGI Commitment to empower women includes an environmental education program reaching over 400 children and providing experiential outdoor education to early adolescent girls. Additionally, the program advances women by helping them establish native tree nursery businesses and reforest their watersheds.
"Women in Nicaragua are proving that they can become leaders in providing solutions in the face of climate change and other environmental threats," Otterstrom said. "The sea turtles being protected by these women are on the critically endangered list. We should not underestimate the transformative effect they are having on saving this ancient species."
PNNOnline.org » The Nonprofit News and Information Resource 9/21/2010
Sea turtles throughout the world are increasingly threatened with extinction, yet the people who can help address this crisis are often ignored.
Last year, Dr. Sarah Otterstrom of the non-profit organization Paso Pacifico made a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to empower women and girls as environmental leaders in Central America. As a result, women in a small fishing village in Nicaragua are now the lead protectors of nesting sea turtles. They earn money for every baby sea turtle they help to hatch which successfully enters the sea.
"Women possess unique knowledge about the value of wildlife, water, and trees to society, yet they have been overlooked as guardians of nature," Dr. Otterstrom said. "Through our effort, Nicaraguan women are now the lead protagonists in protecting sea turtles from extinction. They carefully monitor incubating eggs and assist the hatchlings as they walk to the sea."
In rural Nicaragua, women have few avenues to earn income and rely on informal employment to obtain cash. In this fishing village, women bring in an average of $30 per month through activities such as selling bread and sewing clothes. The ten women participating in Paso Pacifico's program can now earn the same amount of money for protecting a single nest. The women protectors receive 35 cents per hatchling and each turtle nest has over ten dozen eggs. There are hundreds of turtles nesting on the beach each year. The women involved in this project have shown intense collaboration. Rather than individually receiving funds for each protected sea turtle, they opted to pool the money they earn and equally distribute it across their group of sea turtle protectors.
"Nurturing baby sea turtles is very rewarding," sea turtle protector Carolina Coronado explains. "After a sea turtle nests at night, we carefully move the nests to a hatchery we have built and where we protect the nests from poachers and livestock. When the baby turtles hatch, we count them and feel fulfilled as we watch them crawl to the ocean."
Paso Pacifico's CGI Commitment to empower women includes an environmental education program reaching over 400 children and providing experiential outdoor education to early adolescent girls. Additionally, the program advances women by helping them establish native tree nursery businesses and reforest their watersheds.
"Women in Nicaragua are proving that they can become leaders in providing solutions in the face of climate change and other environmental threats," Otterstrom said. "The sea turtles being protected by these women are on the critically endangered list. We should not underestimate the transformative effect they are having on saving this ancient species."
The Oil and the Turtles, (Via Herp Digest)
The Oil and the Turtles,
By Alex Shoumatoff Vanity Fair Web Exclusive
Letter From The Gulf , September 21, 2010
Of all the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, no one single species is being directly affected as much as the critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle. Only 8,000 adult females nested in 2009, and the adult males are thought to be even fewer. Those that remain have been hit hard. Most of the surviving juveniles inhabit the waters 20 to 30 miles from shore, feeding and growing in the same currents and gyres that collected the bulk of the four million barrels spewed by the now capped well. There were confirmed reports of ridleys being burned alive in the pools of corralled, concentrated oil that BP had been burning off during the spill.
Almost every gravid female ridley lays her eggs on a single beach in Tamaulipas, Mexico, coming ashore in a unique mass-nesting event known as the arribada-the arrival. Kemp's cousins in the Pacific, the Olive ridleys, also do this, but the other five sea-turtle species (and a small percentage of ridleys) are solitary nesters and don't always return to the same place. The arribadas happen at Rancho Nuevo-a beach 900 miles southwest from the blowout. It's only 200 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. Not a bad drive, only I'm told it's too dangerous because three warring factions of narcotrafficantes-the Gulf cartel, the Zetas (former hit men of the cartel), and a local mafia called La Maña-have been having shoot-outs along it. Instead, I fly to Tampico, the sleepy port where the opening scene of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was filmed, which is 60 miles south of Rancho Nuevo. (Not that Tampico is immune to the violence; the week before I arrive, the naked bodies of five po!
licemen were found hanging from one of its bridges, I am told by a fellow gringo who narrowly escaped being shaken down at one of the narcos' impromptu roadblocks right in the city.) I'm met at the airport by two people from the federal agency that manages Mexico's protected areas, and they whisk me to the nearby Hampton Inn for the night.
In the morning we are driven to the Rancho Nuevo beach reserve by its director Dr. Gloria Tavera. Its 20 miles of wild white sand are patrolled three times a day by guards on A.T.V.'s, and 20 times a day or more during nesting season. Dr. Tavera tells me that the arribadas are over, but that the white ping-pong-ball-size eggs, having incubated for 45 days, are starting to hatch.
Sure enough, at five a.m. on the second morning, we jump onto four-wheelers and bomb down to the South Corral, four miles from the camp, where dozens of the 800 nests from the June 3 arribada are erupting with hatchlings, about 90 per nest. The babies are three inches long and look like black rubber-toy turtles. They crawl down to the surf and, as soon as they hit the water, their angled forelimbs begin to flap wildly. Then they're pulled into the breaking waves by the undertow and are off, on their own, into the great unknown. Guided by pure instinct, fueled by the remaining yoke in their waterproof belly sacs, they will swim straight out for five days or so until they hit the mats of sargassum, a golden-brown, free-floating marine algae (these lines of sargassum are often only 20 or 30 feet wide, but can extend for miles, and offer cover and food for the hatchlings). We don't know how many hatchlings will survive to adulthood, but the most common ballpark estimate is only !
one in a thousand. Many will be picked off by sharks, many other species of fish, dolphins, and sea birds. Everything wants to eat them. But many more than usual will die when the clockwise currents of the Gulf carry the turtles directly up into the area contaminated by the Deepwater Horizon spill. "The internal damage from the hydrocarbons to the organs of the ridleys could make them unable to reproduce," Dr. Tavera tells me. "That would mean extinction. But nobody knows."
Her fears could be well founded. A new study of shorebirds finds that the ingestion of only a small amount of oil can cause lasting changes in brain function and behavior. The males' pheromones are inhibited so they stop doing their mating behavior.
Conservationists rallied round the ridley in 1978, when human predation left them hanging by a thread. Poaching of the eggs-rich and delicious, they had long been part of the local diet-was stopped, and in l986, when only 600 females came back to nest at Rancho Nuevo, an American law was passed requiring shrimp fishermen meeting certain criteria to equip their nets with escape holes for turtles known as TEDs (turtle excluder devices). For a time, it was working. In 2009 there were 21,000 nests. Six thousand females came ashore over a two-day period that May, the biggest arribada in the 40-year history of the conservation program at Rancho Nuevo. But this year there were only 13,115 nests, the result of a record cold winter followed by three months of red tide, a toxic algae bloom that prevented the females from being able to access the beach. Then, on June 30, the beach was slammed by Hurricane Alex, and a thousand more nests were lost.
Barbara Schroeder, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in Silver Spring, Maryland, thinks the spill is unlikely to spell the end of the ridley but it "is definitely a setback to the turtle's recovery. We are going to have to enhance our efforts to get the species back on the trajectory it was on, and we will need to re-look at the most significant human threats-bycatch from shrimp and other trawlers and gill nets, hook and line-fishing, and boat strikes."
That the four million barrels of oil seem to be dissipating more quickly than expected does not mean the turtles will no longer be affected. The oil below the surface concerns many experts.
Kemp's ridleys in nearshore areas feed on the bottom, which means they have to dive through the oil. What's more, this relatively quick disappearance of the large oil pools was achieved because BP dumped nearly two million gallons of the highly toxic chemical dispersant Corexit into the Gulf-in some cases, without the necessary approval of the Environmental Protection Agency. Corexit, used to break up large pools of oil in water, is an alarmingly unknown entity.
Scientists in Louisiana are just beginning to study its effects on marine life in the Gulf. They've discovered high levels of it in blue-crab larvae, which suggests the poison may have already entered the food chain, just in time for the start of Louisiana's shrimp season. Blue crabs are the ridley's favorite food.
Ed Clark, the president of the Wildlife Center of Virginia, who has been treating oiled wildlife for 28 years, tells me that the dispersant is like "putting a coat of new paint on a junk car." The official marine-life casualty numbers, Clark maintains, are grossly underestimated. "If they're saying 400 turtles were killed, I'd bet my house it's more like 4,000," he says.
"BP is responsible for the damages"-up to $50,000 per turtle, as per the Endangered Species Act-"but it is incumbent on the government to prove what [the damages] are," says Clark. He has heard rumors that the cleanup crews on Grand Isle, Louisiana, which are mainly made up of prisoners, were bagging dead turtles and birds in plastic bags marked for incineration because no one from Fish and Wildlife responded to their calls. The F.W.S. agents were mainly focused on federally owned coastline. It may go beyond unresponsive government agencies. Clark also heard rumors that BP was deliberately burning oiled sargassum, even though living sea turtles were known to be still in the floating mats.
So the crisis isn't over, as BP and the government would have you believe. It's only beginning. The biological consequences of this disaster will be felt for years, over generations, like Chernobyl. And we may never know how bad it was.
By Alex Shoumatoff Vanity Fair Web Exclusive
Letter From The Gulf , September 21, 2010
Of all the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, no one single species is being directly affected as much as the critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle. Only 8,000 adult females nested in 2009, and the adult males are thought to be even fewer. Those that remain have been hit hard. Most of the surviving juveniles inhabit the waters 20 to 30 miles from shore, feeding and growing in the same currents and gyres that collected the bulk of the four million barrels spewed by the now capped well. There were confirmed reports of ridleys being burned alive in the pools of corralled, concentrated oil that BP had been burning off during the spill.
Almost every gravid female ridley lays her eggs on a single beach in Tamaulipas, Mexico, coming ashore in a unique mass-nesting event known as the arribada-the arrival. Kemp's cousins in the Pacific, the Olive ridleys, also do this, but the other five sea-turtle species (and a small percentage of ridleys) are solitary nesters and don't always return to the same place. The arribadas happen at Rancho Nuevo-a beach 900 miles southwest from the blowout. It's only 200 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. Not a bad drive, only I'm told it's too dangerous because three warring factions of narcotrafficantes-the Gulf cartel, the Zetas (former hit men of the cartel), and a local mafia called La Maña-have been having shoot-outs along it. Instead, I fly to Tampico, the sleepy port where the opening scene of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was filmed, which is 60 miles south of Rancho Nuevo. (Not that Tampico is immune to the violence; the week before I arrive, the naked bodies of five po!
licemen were found hanging from one of its bridges, I am told by a fellow gringo who narrowly escaped being shaken down at one of the narcos' impromptu roadblocks right in the city.) I'm met at the airport by two people from the federal agency that manages Mexico's protected areas, and they whisk me to the nearby Hampton Inn for the night.
In the morning we are driven to the Rancho Nuevo beach reserve by its director Dr. Gloria Tavera. Its 20 miles of wild white sand are patrolled three times a day by guards on A.T.V.'s, and 20 times a day or more during nesting season. Dr. Tavera tells me that the arribadas are over, but that the white ping-pong-ball-size eggs, having incubated for 45 days, are starting to hatch.
Sure enough, at five a.m. on the second morning, we jump onto four-wheelers and bomb down to the South Corral, four miles from the camp, where dozens of the 800 nests from the June 3 arribada are erupting with hatchlings, about 90 per nest. The babies are three inches long and look like black rubber-toy turtles. They crawl down to the surf and, as soon as they hit the water, their angled forelimbs begin to flap wildly. Then they're pulled into the breaking waves by the undertow and are off, on their own, into the great unknown. Guided by pure instinct, fueled by the remaining yoke in their waterproof belly sacs, they will swim straight out for five days or so until they hit the mats of sargassum, a golden-brown, free-floating marine algae (these lines of sargassum are often only 20 or 30 feet wide, but can extend for miles, and offer cover and food for the hatchlings). We don't know how many hatchlings will survive to adulthood, but the most common ballpark estimate is only !
one in a thousand. Many will be picked off by sharks, many other species of fish, dolphins, and sea birds. Everything wants to eat them. But many more than usual will die when the clockwise currents of the Gulf carry the turtles directly up into the area contaminated by the Deepwater Horizon spill. "The internal damage from the hydrocarbons to the organs of the ridleys could make them unable to reproduce," Dr. Tavera tells me. "That would mean extinction. But nobody knows."
Her fears could be well founded. A new study of shorebirds finds that the ingestion of only a small amount of oil can cause lasting changes in brain function and behavior. The males' pheromones are inhibited so they stop doing their mating behavior.
Conservationists rallied round the ridley in 1978, when human predation left them hanging by a thread. Poaching of the eggs-rich and delicious, they had long been part of the local diet-was stopped, and in l986, when only 600 females came back to nest at Rancho Nuevo, an American law was passed requiring shrimp fishermen meeting certain criteria to equip their nets with escape holes for turtles known as TEDs (turtle excluder devices). For a time, it was working. In 2009 there were 21,000 nests. Six thousand females came ashore over a two-day period that May, the biggest arribada in the 40-year history of the conservation program at Rancho Nuevo. But this year there were only 13,115 nests, the result of a record cold winter followed by three months of red tide, a toxic algae bloom that prevented the females from being able to access the beach. Then, on June 30, the beach was slammed by Hurricane Alex, and a thousand more nests were lost.
Barbara Schroeder, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in Silver Spring, Maryland, thinks the spill is unlikely to spell the end of the ridley but it "is definitely a setback to the turtle's recovery. We are going to have to enhance our efforts to get the species back on the trajectory it was on, and we will need to re-look at the most significant human threats-bycatch from shrimp and other trawlers and gill nets, hook and line-fishing, and boat strikes."
That the four million barrels of oil seem to be dissipating more quickly than expected does not mean the turtles will no longer be affected. The oil below the surface concerns many experts.
Kemp's ridleys in nearshore areas feed on the bottom, which means they have to dive through the oil. What's more, this relatively quick disappearance of the large oil pools was achieved because BP dumped nearly two million gallons of the highly toxic chemical dispersant Corexit into the Gulf-in some cases, without the necessary approval of the Environmental Protection Agency. Corexit, used to break up large pools of oil in water, is an alarmingly unknown entity.
Scientists in Louisiana are just beginning to study its effects on marine life in the Gulf. They've discovered high levels of it in blue-crab larvae, which suggests the poison may have already entered the food chain, just in time for the start of Louisiana's shrimp season. Blue crabs are the ridley's favorite food.
Ed Clark, the president of the Wildlife Center of Virginia, who has been treating oiled wildlife for 28 years, tells me that the dispersant is like "putting a coat of new paint on a junk car." The official marine-life casualty numbers, Clark maintains, are grossly underestimated. "If they're saying 400 turtles were killed, I'd bet my house it's more like 4,000," he says.
"BP is responsible for the damages"-up to $50,000 per turtle, as per the Endangered Species Act-"but it is incumbent on the government to prove what [the damages] are," says Clark. He has heard rumors that the cleanup crews on Grand Isle, Louisiana, which are mainly made up of prisoners, were bagging dead turtles and birds in plastic bags marked for incineration because no one from Fish and Wildlife responded to their calls. The F.W.S. agents were mainly focused on federally owned coastline. It may go beyond unresponsive government agencies. Clark also heard rumors that BP was deliberately burning oiled sargassum, even though living sea turtles were known to be still in the floating mats.
So the crisis isn't over, as BP and the government would have you believe. It's only beginning. The biological consequences of this disaster will be felt for years, over generations, like Chernobyl. And we may never know how bad it was.
Rural Women in Nicaragua Lead Effort to Protect Endangered Sea Turtles (Via Herp Digest)
Rural Women in Nicaragua Lead Effort to Protect Endangered Sea Turtles
PNNOnline.org » The Nonprofit News and Information Resource 9/21/2010
Sea turtles throughout the world are increasingly threatened with extinction, yet the people who can help address this crisis are often ignored.
Last year, Dr. Sarah Otterstrom of the non-profit organization Paso Pacifico made a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to empower women and girls as environmental leaders in Central America. As a result, women in a small fishing village in Nicaragua are now the lead protectors of nesting sea turtles. They earn money for every baby sea turtle they help to hatch which successfully enters the sea.
"Women possess unique knowledge about the value of wildlife, water, and trees to society, yet they have been overlooked as guardians of nature," Dr. Otterstrom said. "Through our effort, Nicaraguan women are now the lead protagonists in protecting sea turtles from extinction. They carefully monitor incubating eggs and assist the hatchlings as they walk to the sea."
In rural Nicaragua, women have few avenues to earn income and rely on informal employment to obtain cash. In this fishing village, women bring in an average of $30 per month through activities such as selling bread and sewing clothes. The ten women participating in Paso Pacifico's program can now earn the same amount of money for protecting a single nest. The women protectors receive 35 cents per hatchling and each turtle nest has over ten dozen eggs. There are hundreds of turtles nesting on the beach each year. The women involved in this project have shown intense collaboration. Rather than individually receiving funds for each protected sea turtle, they opted to pool the money they earn and equally distribute it across their group of sea turtle protectors.
"Nurturing baby sea turtles is very rewarding," sea turtle protector Carolina Coronado explains. "After a sea turtle nests at night, we carefully move the nests to a hatchery we have built and where we protect the nests from poachers and livestock. When the baby turtles hatch, we count them and feel fulfilled as we watch them crawl to the ocean."
Paso Pacifico's CGI Commitment to empower women includes an environmental education program reaching over 400 children and providing experiential outdoor education to early adolescent girls. Additionally, the program advances women by helping them establish native tree nursery businesses and reforest their watersheds.
"Women in Nicaragua are proving that they can become leaders in providing solutions in the face of climate change and other environmental threats," Otterstrom said. "The sea turtles being protected by these women are on the critically endangered list. We should not underestimate the transformative effect they are having on saving this ancient species."
PNNOnline.org » The Nonprofit News and Information Resource 9/21/2010
Sea turtles throughout the world are increasingly threatened with extinction, yet the people who can help address this crisis are often ignored.
Last year, Dr. Sarah Otterstrom of the non-profit organization Paso Pacifico made a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to empower women and girls as environmental leaders in Central America. As a result, women in a small fishing village in Nicaragua are now the lead protectors of nesting sea turtles. They earn money for every baby sea turtle they help to hatch which successfully enters the sea.
"Women possess unique knowledge about the value of wildlife, water, and trees to society, yet they have been overlooked as guardians of nature," Dr. Otterstrom said. "Through our effort, Nicaraguan women are now the lead protagonists in protecting sea turtles from extinction. They carefully monitor incubating eggs and assist the hatchlings as they walk to the sea."
In rural Nicaragua, women have few avenues to earn income and rely on informal employment to obtain cash. In this fishing village, women bring in an average of $30 per month through activities such as selling bread and sewing clothes. The ten women participating in Paso Pacifico's program can now earn the same amount of money for protecting a single nest. The women protectors receive 35 cents per hatchling and each turtle nest has over ten dozen eggs. There are hundreds of turtles nesting on the beach each year. The women involved in this project have shown intense collaboration. Rather than individually receiving funds for each protected sea turtle, they opted to pool the money they earn and equally distribute it across their group of sea turtle protectors.
"Nurturing baby sea turtles is very rewarding," sea turtle protector Carolina Coronado explains. "After a sea turtle nests at night, we carefully move the nests to a hatchery we have built and where we protect the nests from poachers and livestock. When the baby turtles hatch, we count them and feel fulfilled as we watch them crawl to the ocean."
Paso Pacifico's CGI Commitment to empower women includes an environmental education program reaching over 400 children and providing experiential outdoor education to early adolescent girls. Additionally, the program advances women by helping them establish native tree nursery businesses and reforest their watersheds.
"Women in Nicaragua are proving that they can become leaders in providing solutions in the face of climate change and other environmental threats," Otterstrom said. "The sea turtles being protected by these women are on the critically endangered list. We should not underestimate the transformative effect they are having on saving this ancient species."
The Oil and the Turtles, (Via Herp Digest)
The Oil and the Turtles,
By Alex Shoumatoff Vanity Fair Web Exclusive
Letter From The Gulf , September 21, 2010
Of all the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, no one single species is being directly affected as much as the critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle. Only 8,000 adult females nested in 2009, and the adult males are thought to be even fewer. Those that remain have been hit hard. Most of the surviving juveniles inhabit the waters 20 to 30 miles from shore, feeding and growing in the same currents and gyres that collected the bulk of the four million barrels spewed by the now capped well. There were confirmed reports of ridleys being burned alive in the pools of corralled, concentrated oil that BP had been burning off during the spill.
Almost every gravid female ridley lays her eggs on a single beach in Tamaulipas, Mexico, coming ashore in a unique mass-nesting event known as the arribada-the arrival. Kemp's cousins in the Pacific, the Olive ridleys, also do this, but the other five sea-turtle species (and a small percentage of ridleys) are solitary nesters and don't always return to the same place. The arribadas happen at Rancho Nuevo-a beach 900 miles southwest from the blowout. It's only 200 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. Not a bad drive, only I'm told it's too dangerous because three warring factions of narcotrafficantes-the Gulf cartel, the Zetas (former hit men of the cartel), and a local mafia called La Maña-have been having shoot-outs along it. Instead, I fly to Tampico, the sleepy port where the opening scene of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was filmed, which is 60 miles south of Rancho Nuevo. (Not that Tampico is immune to the violence; the week before I arrive, the naked bodies of five po!
licemen were found hanging from one of its bridges, I am told by a fellow gringo who narrowly escaped being shaken down at one of the narcos' impromptu roadblocks right in the city.) I'm met at the airport by two people from the federal agency that manages Mexico's protected areas, and they whisk me to the nearby Hampton Inn for the night.
In the morning we are driven to the Rancho Nuevo beach reserve by its director Dr. Gloria Tavera. Its 20 miles of wild white sand are patrolled three times a day by guards on A.T.V.'s, and 20 times a day or more during nesting season. Dr. Tavera tells me that the arribadas are over, but that the white ping-pong-ball-size eggs, having incubated for 45 days, are starting to hatch.
Sure enough, at five a.m. on the second morning, we jump onto four-wheelers and bomb down to the South Corral, four miles from the camp, where dozens of the 800 nests from the June 3 arribada are erupting with hatchlings, about 90 per nest. The babies are three inches long and look like black rubber-toy turtles. They crawl down to the surf and, as soon as they hit the water, their angled forelimbs begin to flap wildly. Then they're pulled into the breaking waves by the undertow and are off, on their own, into the great unknown. Guided by pure instinct, fueled by the remaining yoke in their waterproof belly sacs, they will swim straight out for five days or so until they hit the mats of sargassum, a golden-brown, free-floating marine algae (these lines of sargassum are often only 20 or 30 feet wide, but can extend for miles, and offer cover and food for the hatchlings). We don't know how many hatchlings will survive to adulthood, but the most common ballpark estimate is only !
one in a thousand. Many will be picked off by sharks, many other species of fish, dolphins, and sea birds. Everything wants to eat them. But many more than usual will die when the clockwise currents of the Gulf carry the turtles directly up into the area contaminated by the Deepwater Horizon spill. "The internal damage from the hydrocarbons to the organs of the ridleys could make them unable to reproduce," Dr. Tavera tells me. "That would mean extinction. But nobody knows."
Her fears could be well founded. A new study of shorebirds finds that the ingestion of only a small amount of oil can cause lasting changes in brain function and behavior. The males' pheromones are inhibited so they stop doing their mating behavior.
Conservationists rallied round the ridley in 1978, when human predation left them hanging by a thread. Poaching of the eggs-rich and delicious, they had long been part of the local diet-was stopped, and in l986, when only 600 females came back to nest at Rancho Nuevo, an American law was passed requiring shrimp fishermen meeting certain criteria to equip their nets with escape holes for turtles known as TEDs (turtle excluder devices). For a time, it was working. In 2009 there were 21,000 nests. Six thousand females came ashore over a two-day period that May, the biggest arribada in the 40-year history of the conservation program at Rancho Nuevo. But this year there were only 13,115 nests, the result of a record cold winter followed by three months of red tide, a toxic algae bloom that prevented the females from being able to access the beach. Then, on June 30, the beach was slammed by Hurricane Alex, and a thousand more nests were lost.
Barbara Schroeder, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in Silver Spring, Maryland, thinks the spill is unlikely to spell the end of the ridley but it "is definitely a setback to the turtle's recovery. We are going to have to enhance our efforts to get the species back on the trajectory it was on, and we will need to re-look at the most significant human threats-bycatch from shrimp and other trawlers and gill nets, hook and line-fishing, and boat strikes."
That the four million barrels of oil seem to be dissipating more quickly than expected does not mean the turtles will no longer be affected. The oil below the surface concerns many experts.
Kemp's ridleys in nearshore areas feed on the bottom, which means they have to dive through the oil. What's more, this relatively quick disappearance of the large oil pools was achieved because BP dumped nearly two million gallons of the highly toxic chemical dispersant Corexit into the Gulf-in some cases, without the necessary approval of the Environmental Protection Agency. Corexit, used to break up large pools of oil in water, is an alarmingly unknown entity.
Scientists in Louisiana are just beginning to study its effects on marine life in the Gulf. They've discovered high levels of it in blue-crab larvae, which suggests the poison may have already entered the food chain, just in time for the start of Louisiana's shrimp season. Blue crabs are the ridley's favorite food.
Ed Clark, the president of the Wildlife Center of Virginia, who has been treating oiled wildlife for 28 years, tells me that the dispersant is like "putting a coat of new paint on a junk car." The official marine-life casualty numbers, Clark maintains, are grossly underestimated. "If they're saying 400 turtles were killed, I'd bet my house it's more like 4,000," he says.
"BP is responsible for the damages"-up to $50,000 per turtle, as per the Endangered Species Act-"but it is incumbent on the government to prove what [the damages] are," says Clark. He has heard rumors that the cleanup crews on Grand Isle, Louisiana, which are mainly made up of prisoners, were bagging dead turtles and birds in plastic bags marked for incineration because no one from Fish and Wildlife responded to their calls. The F.W.S. agents were mainly focused on federally owned coastline. It may go beyond unresponsive government agencies. Clark also heard rumors that BP was deliberately burning oiled sargassum, even though living sea turtles were known to be still in the floating mats.
So the crisis isn't over, as BP and the government would have you believe. It's only beginning. The biological consequences of this disaster will be felt for years, over generations, like Chernobyl. And we may never know how bad it was.
By Alex Shoumatoff Vanity Fair Web Exclusive
Letter From The Gulf , September 21, 2010
Of all the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, no one single species is being directly affected as much as the critically endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle. Only 8,000 adult females nested in 2009, and the adult males are thought to be even fewer. Those that remain have been hit hard. Most of the surviving juveniles inhabit the waters 20 to 30 miles from shore, feeding and growing in the same currents and gyres that collected the bulk of the four million barrels spewed by the now capped well. There were confirmed reports of ridleys being burned alive in the pools of corralled, concentrated oil that BP had been burning off during the spill.
Almost every gravid female ridley lays her eggs on a single beach in Tamaulipas, Mexico, coming ashore in a unique mass-nesting event known as the arribada-the arrival. Kemp's cousins in the Pacific, the Olive ridleys, also do this, but the other five sea-turtle species (and a small percentage of ridleys) are solitary nesters and don't always return to the same place. The arribadas happen at Rancho Nuevo-a beach 900 miles southwest from the blowout. It's only 200 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. Not a bad drive, only I'm told it's too dangerous because three warring factions of narcotrafficantes-the Gulf cartel, the Zetas (former hit men of the cartel), and a local mafia called La Maña-have been having shoot-outs along it. Instead, I fly to Tampico, the sleepy port where the opening scene of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was filmed, which is 60 miles south of Rancho Nuevo. (Not that Tampico is immune to the violence; the week before I arrive, the naked bodies of five po!
licemen were found hanging from one of its bridges, I am told by a fellow gringo who narrowly escaped being shaken down at one of the narcos' impromptu roadblocks right in the city.) I'm met at the airport by two people from the federal agency that manages Mexico's protected areas, and they whisk me to the nearby Hampton Inn for the night.
In the morning we are driven to the Rancho Nuevo beach reserve by its director Dr. Gloria Tavera. Its 20 miles of wild white sand are patrolled three times a day by guards on A.T.V.'s, and 20 times a day or more during nesting season. Dr. Tavera tells me that the arribadas are over, but that the white ping-pong-ball-size eggs, having incubated for 45 days, are starting to hatch.
Sure enough, at five a.m. on the second morning, we jump onto four-wheelers and bomb down to the South Corral, four miles from the camp, where dozens of the 800 nests from the June 3 arribada are erupting with hatchlings, about 90 per nest. The babies are three inches long and look like black rubber-toy turtles. They crawl down to the surf and, as soon as they hit the water, their angled forelimbs begin to flap wildly. Then they're pulled into the breaking waves by the undertow and are off, on their own, into the great unknown. Guided by pure instinct, fueled by the remaining yoke in their waterproof belly sacs, they will swim straight out for five days or so until they hit the mats of sargassum, a golden-brown, free-floating marine algae (these lines of sargassum are often only 20 or 30 feet wide, but can extend for miles, and offer cover and food for the hatchlings). We don't know how many hatchlings will survive to adulthood, but the most common ballpark estimate is only !
one in a thousand. Many will be picked off by sharks, many other species of fish, dolphins, and sea birds. Everything wants to eat them. But many more than usual will die when the clockwise currents of the Gulf carry the turtles directly up into the area contaminated by the Deepwater Horizon spill. "The internal damage from the hydrocarbons to the organs of the ridleys could make them unable to reproduce," Dr. Tavera tells me. "That would mean extinction. But nobody knows."
Her fears could be well founded. A new study of shorebirds finds that the ingestion of only a small amount of oil can cause lasting changes in brain function and behavior. The males' pheromones are inhibited so they stop doing their mating behavior.
Conservationists rallied round the ridley in 1978, when human predation left them hanging by a thread. Poaching of the eggs-rich and delicious, they had long been part of the local diet-was stopped, and in l986, when only 600 females came back to nest at Rancho Nuevo, an American law was passed requiring shrimp fishermen meeting certain criteria to equip their nets with escape holes for turtles known as TEDs (turtle excluder devices). For a time, it was working. In 2009 there were 21,000 nests. Six thousand females came ashore over a two-day period that May, the biggest arribada in the 40-year history of the conservation program at Rancho Nuevo. But this year there were only 13,115 nests, the result of a record cold winter followed by three months of red tide, a toxic algae bloom that prevented the females from being able to access the beach. Then, on June 30, the beach was slammed by Hurricane Alex, and a thousand more nests were lost.
Barbara Schroeder, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in Silver Spring, Maryland, thinks the spill is unlikely to spell the end of the ridley but it "is definitely a setback to the turtle's recovery. We are going to have to enhance our efforts to get the species back on the trajectory it was on, and we will need to re-look at the most significant human threats-bycatch from shrimp and other trawlers and gill nets, hook and line-fishing, and boat strikes."
That the four million barrels of oil seem to be dissipating more quickly than expected does not mean the turtles will no longer be affected. The oil below the surface concerns many experts.
Kemp's ridleys in nearshore areas feed on the bottom, which means they have to dive through the oil. What's more, this relatively quick disappearance of the large oil pools was achieved because BP dumped nearly two million gallons of the highly toxic chemical dispersant Corexit into the Gulf-in some cases, without the necessary approval of the Environmental Protection Agency. Corexit, used to break up large pools of oil in water, is an alarmingly unknown entity.
Scientists in Louisiana are just beginning to study its effects on marine life in the Gulf. They've discovered high levels of it in blue-crab larvae, which suggests the poison may have already entered the food chain, just in time for the start of Louisiana's shrimp season. Blue crabs are the ridley's favorite food.
Ed Clark, the president of the Wildlife Center of Virginia, who has been treating oiled wildlife for 28 years, tells me that the dispersant is like "putting a coat of new paint on a junk car." The official marine-life casualty numbers, Clark maintains, are grossly underestimated. "If they're saying 400 turtles were killed, I'd bet my house it's more like 4,000," he says.
"BP is responsible for the damages"-up to $50,000 per turtle, as per the Endangered Species Act-"but it is incumbent on the government to prove what [the damages] are," says Clark. He has heard rumors that the cleanup crews on Grand Isle, Louisiana, which are mainly made up of prisoners, were bagging dead turtles and birds in plastic bags marked for incineration because no one from Fish and Wildlife responded to their calls. The F.W.S. agents were mainly focused on federally owned coastline. It may go beyond unresponsive government agencies. Clark also heard rumors that BP was deliberately burning oiled sargassum, even though living sea turtles were known to be still in the floating mats.
So the crisis isn't over, as BP and the government would have you believe. It's only beginning. The biological consequences of this disaster will be felt for years, over generations, like Chernobyl. And we may never know how bad it was.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Shrimping and Sea Turtles: Is It Either/Or? Some Thoughts (Via HerpDigest)
Shrimping and Sea Turtles: Is It Either/Or? Some Thoughts.
7/15/10 by Shaila Dewan
From the NYTimes Green Blog, about the Energy and the Environment.
Because of an unusually high number of turtle strandings since the gulf oil spill - about six times the usual number - environmentalists are asking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to take extra steps to protect sea turtles from shrimpers.
As I write in my examination of animal deaths in the gulf in The New York Times, more than 450 dead turtles, most of them endangered Kemp's ridleys, have been found since the spill. Oil might be the most obvious culprit, but much of the evidence points to shrimp boats, whose nets can drown turtles.
One major problem with that theory is that there have been far fewer shrimpers in the gulf than in previous seasons. But there have also been reports that more turtles have been hanging around near the coast, raising questions about whether the oil has driven them there or there is some other explanation - for example, a rebounding population - for the increase. More turtles in heavily trafficked areas means more accidents.
Regardless of the cause, the Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Center for Biological Diversity are arguing that turtles, which are vulnerable to oil fumes and oiled food and which don't instinctively avoid oil, can't take the stress of more shrimping right now.
The Texas shrimping season opens Thursday night after its annual two-month shutdown, and boats from as far as the Eastern seaboard will be sailing there to shrimp. This year, with shrimp prices high, a high number of shrimpers are expected. Environmental groups are asking that the closing be extended and have notified NOAA that they intend to file a lawsuit charging that the oil spill requires a re-evaluation of commercial fishing policies under the Endangered Species Act.
"Right now, we need to be protecting the remaining fish and wildlife in the gulf, so it can provide a genetic pool for wildlife to recolonize once this mess is cleaned up," said Todd Steiner, a biologist and the executive director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network. "This is not the time to be short-sighted and selfish to both future generations of fishers and the American public by vacuuming up all the life that has survived."
7/15/10 by Shaila Dewan
From the NYTimes Green Blog, about the Energy and the Environment.
Because of an unusually high number of turtle strandings since the gulf oil spill - about six times the usual number - environmentalists are asking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to take extra steps to protect sea turtles from shrimpers.
As I write in my examination of animal deaths in the gulf in The New York Times, more than 450 dead turtles, most of them endangered Kemp's ridleys, have been found since the spill. Oil might be the most obvious culprit, but much of the evidence points to shrimp boats, whose nets can drown turtles.
One major problem with that theory is that there have been far fewer shrimpers in the gulf than in previous seasons. But there have also been reports that more turtles have been hanging around near the coast, raising questions about whether the oil has driven them there or there is some other explanation - for example, a rebounding population - for the increase. More turtles in heavily trafficked areas means more accidents.
Regardless of the cause, the Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Center for Biological Diversity are arguing that turtles, which are vulnerable to oil fumes and oiled food and which don't instinctively avoid oil, can't take the stress of more shrimping right now.
The Texas shrimping season opens Thursday night after its annual two-month shutdown, and boats from as far as the Eastern seaboard will be sailing there to shrimp. This year, with shrimp prices high, a high number of shrimpers are expected. Environmental groups are asking that the closing be extended and have notified NOAA that they intend to file a lawsuit charging that the oil spill requires a re-evaluation of commercial fishing policies under the Endangered Species Act.
"Right now, we need to be protecting the remaining fish and wildlife in the gulf, so it can provide a genetic pool for wildlife to recolonize once this mess is cleaned up," said Todd Steiner, a biologist and the executive director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network. "This is not the time to be short-sighted and selfish to both future generations of fishers and the American public by vacuuming up all the life that has survived."
Friday, July 2, 2010
Thousands of Sea Turtle Eggs To Be Moved Out of Oil's Way (Via HerpDigest)
Thousands of Sea Turtle Eggs To Be Moved Out of Oil's Way
by Lauren Schenkman on June 29, 2010
For the tens of thousands of sea turtle eggs incubating in the sands of the northern Gulf of Mexico-and dangerously near the oil-it's come to this: Officials are planning to dig up the approximately 700 nests on Alabama and the Florida panhandle beaches, pack the eggs in Styrofoam boxes, and fly them to a facility in eastern Florida where they can mature. Once the eggs have hatched, the young turtles will be released in darkness on Florida's Atlantic beaches into oil-free water. Translocation of nests on this scale has never been attempted before.
"This is really a worst-case scenario," says Michael Ziccardi, a University of California, Davis, veterinarian and oil-spill veteran who is leading the government's response efforts for marine mammals and sea turtles. "We hoped we wouldn't get to this point."
Sea turtles that hatch in the Northern Gulf of Mexico typically spend a few months near the coast, and many eventually enter the Loop Current to make their way into the Atlantic. This year, that path would put them right in the oil spill. Federal officials in charge of response "believe that most, if not all, of the 2010 Northern Gulf hatchling cohort would be at high risk of encountering oil during this period," according to the written translocation plan, developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They estimate that 50,000 hatchlings could be lost to the oil.
Nests are already being marked so that cleanup crews can skirt them, and officials hope to begin moving them within weeks, says Ziccardi. The operations will continue well past laying season, which ends in August, because eggs incubate for about 60 days. The logistics of finding contractors to train and lead collection teams, a facility where the eggs can come to term, and an air-freight company that can transport them three times a week for the next 3 months are daunting.
Officials plan to dig up the eggs at about day 50 of their incubation-well after the hatchling's sex, which is determined by the nest's temperature, is set. Workers moving the eggs have to be careful not to turn them over or roll them so as not to disturb membranes that connect the embryo to the shell and cushion it, says Philip Allman, a marine biologist at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers. "If the orientation of the egg is turned significantly from the position in the nest, the rotation can break the membranes and cause the embryos to die," he says. "Even in flight, turbulence and a bumpy landing could be enough" to break the membranes.
Moving the eggs could also affect where the turtles go to nest once they're adults, Allman says, because "a lot of evidence indicates that sea turtles return to the same region where they hatch from to nest." Some researchers believe embryos somehow learn the location of their home beach while still in the egg; others think that "imprinting" process happens as hatchlings make their way to the water. The plan could mean the hatchlings imprint on the east coast of Florida, which "may impact which breeding population they join once maturing," Allman says. Although this could change the genetic makeup of east coast populations, which aren't identical to those in the northern Gulf of Mexico populations, he thinks the risks of negative effects are minimal. "I think it is a chance worth taking," he says.
Individual nests are sometimes moved above high tide or brought into captivity to protect eggs from predators or poaching. Although an operation of this scale is unprecedented, it's the best option right now, says Thane Wibbels, a herpetologist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. "You're either reactive or proactive, and if you're reactive, it's too late."
Smaller-scale translocations have been successful, Wibbels points out; Each year from 1978 until 1988, about 2000 Kemp's ridley sea turtle eggs were moved from the species' sole nesting beach in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico, to Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi, Texas, in a bid to start a second nesting beach. Today, he says, about 200 turtles nest there.
After the Ixtoc I well blew out in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979, 9000 Kemp's ridley hatchlings were kept on their nesting beach and then transported to cleaner waters, says Allman. "Multiple authors reported a few years later that the oil spill did not have a significant impact to the Kemp's ridley sea turtles," he says.
"In a normal year you'd think, 'That's crazy,' " Wibbels says. "We want these turtles to do what's natural, ... but if you have to prevent a large amount of mortality, you have to make tough decisions."
by Lauren Schenkman on June 29, 2010
For the tens of thousands of sea turtle eggs incubating in the sands of the northern Gulf of Mexico-and dangerously near the oil-it's come to this: Officials are planning to dig up the approximately 700 nests on Alabama and the Florida panhandle beaches, pack the eggs in Styrofoam boxes, and fly them to a facility in eastern Florida where they can mature. Once the eggs have hatched, the young turtles will be released in darkness on Florida's Atlantic beaches into oil-free water. Translocation of nests on this scale has never been attempted before.
"This is really a worst-case scenario," says Michael Ziccardi, a University of California, Davis, veterinarian and oil-spill veteran who is leading the government's response efforts for marine mammals and sea turtles. "We hoped we wouldn't get to this point."
Sea turtles that hatch in the Northern Gulf of Mexico typically spend a few months near the coast, and many eventually enter the Loop Current to make their way into the Atlantic. This year, that path would put them right in the oil spill. Federal officials in charge of response "believe that most, if not all, of the 2010 Northern Gulf hatchling cohort would be at high risk of encountering oil during this period," according to the written translocation plan, developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They estimate that 50,000 hatchlings could be lost to the oil.
Nests are already being marked so that cleanup crews can skirt them, and officials hope to begin moving them within weeks, says Ziccardi. The operations will continue well past laying season, which ends in August, because eggs incubate for about 60 days. The logistics of finding contractors to train and lead collection teams, a facility where the eggs can come to term, and an air-freight company that can transport them three times a week for the next 3 months are daunting.
Officials plan to dig up the eggs at about day 50 of their incubation-well after the hatchling's sex, which is determined by the nest's temperature, is set. Workers moving the eggs have to be careful not to turn them over or roll them so as not to disturb membranes that connect the embryo to the shell and cushion it, says Philip Allman, a marine biologist at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers. "If the orientation of the egg is turned significantly from the position in the nest, the rotation can break the membranes and cause the embryos to die," he says. "Even in flight, turbulence and a bumpy landing could be enough" to break the membranes.
Moving the eggs could also affect where the turtles go to nest once they're adults, Allman says, because "a lot of evidence indicates that sea turtles return to the same region where they hatch from to nest." Some researchers believe embryos somehow learn the location of their home beach while still in the egg; others think that "imprinting" process happens as hatchlings make their way to the water. The plan could mean the hatchlings imprint on the east coast of Florida, which "may impact which breeding population they join once maturing," Allman says. Although this could change the genetic makeup of east coast populations, which aren't identical to those in the northern Gulf of Mexico populations, he thinks the risks of negative effects are minimal. "I think it is a chance worth taking," he says.
Individual nests are sometimes moved above high tide or brought into captivity to protect eggs from predators or poaching. Although an operation of this scale is unprecedented, it's the best option right now, says Thane Wibbels, a herpetologist at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. "You're either reactive or proactive, and if you're reactive, it's too late."
Smaller-scale translocations have been successful, Wibbels points out; Each year from 1978 until 1988, about 2000 Kemp's ridley sea turtle eggs were moved from the species' sole nesting beach in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico, to Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi, Texas, in a bid to start a second nesting beach. Today, he says, about 200 turtles nest there.
After the Ixtoc I well blew out in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979, 9000 Kemp's ridley hatchlings were kept on their nesting beach and then transported to cleaner waters, says Allman. "Multiple authors reported a few years later that the oil spill did not have a significant impact to the Kemp's ridley sea turtles," he says.
"In a normal year you'd think, 'That's crazy,' " Wibbels says. "We want these turtles to do what's natural, ... but if you have to prevent a large amount of mortality, you have to make tough decisions."
Saturday, June 19, 2010
DEATH BY FIRE IN THE GULF (Via HerpDigest)
DEATH BY FIRE IN THE GULF -SO-CALLED BURN BOXES ARE TORCHING OIL FROM THE WATER'S SURFACE AT THE SACRIFICE OF TURTLES, CRABS, SEA SLUGS AND OTHER SEA LIFE.
By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2010
Reporting from the Gulf of Mexico -
Here on the open ocean, 12 miles from ground zero of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the gulf is hovering between life and death.
The large strands of sargassum seaweed atop the ocean are normally noisy with birds and thick with crustaceans, small fish and sea turtles. But now this is a silent panorama, heavy with the smell of oil.
There are no birds. The seaweed is soaked in rust-colored crude and chemical dispersant. It is devoid of life except for the occasional juvenile sea turtle, speckled with oil and clinging to the only habitat it knows. Thick ribbons of oil spread out through the sea like the strips in egg flower soup, gorgeous and deadly.
A few dead fish float in the water, though dolphin-fish, tuna, flying fish and the occasional shark can still be seen swimming near the surface, threading their way through the wavy, sometimes iridescent gobs of crude.
"This is devastating. I mean literally, it's terrible. All this should be pretty much blue water, and - look at it. It just looks bad," said Kevin Aderhold, a longtime charter fishing captain who has been taking a team of researchers deep into the gulf every day to rescue oil-soaked sea turtles.
"When this first happened, a lot of us were like, they'll cap that thing and we'll be out fishing again. Now reality's set in. Look around you. This is long-term. This'll be here for-ev-er."
And then it gets worse. When the weather is calm and the sea is placid, ships trailing fireproof booms corral the black oil, the coated seaweed and whatever may be caught in it, and torch it into hundred-foot flames, sending plumes of smoke skyward in ebony mushrooms. This patch of unmarked ocean gets designated over the radio as "the burn box."
Wildlife researchers operating here, in the regions closest to the spill, are witnesses to a disquieting choice: Protecting shorebirds, delicate marshes and prime tourist beaches along the coast by stopping the oil before it moves ashore has meant the largely unseen sacrifice of some wildlife out at sea, poisoned with chemical dispersants and sometimes boiled by the burning of spilled oil on the water's surface.
"It reflects the conventional wisdom of oil spills: If they just keep the oil out at sea, the harm will be minimal. And I disagree with that completely," said Blair Witherington, a research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who has been part of the sea turtle rescue mission.
By unhappy coincidence, the same convergences of ocean currents that create long mats of sargassum - nurturing countless crabs, slugs and surface fish that are crucial food for turtles, birds and larger fish - also coalesce the oil, creating islands of death sometimes 30 miles long.
"Most of the Gulf of Mexico is a desert. Nothing out there to live on. It's all concentrated in these oases," Witherington said.
"Ordinarily, the sargassum is a nice, golden color. You shake it, and all kinds of life comes out: shrimp, crabs, worms, sea slugs. The place is really just bursting with life. It's the base of the food chain. And these areas we're seeing here by comparison are quite dead," he said.
"It's amazing. We'll see flying fish, and they'll land in this stuff and just get stuck."
Hardest hit of all, it appears, are the sea jellies and snails that drift along the gulf's surface, some of the most important food sources for sea turtles.
"These animals drift into the oil lines and it's like flies on fly paper," Witherington said. "As far as I can tell, that whole fauna is just completely wiped out."
The turtle rescue team sets out at 6 a.m. in the muggy warm stillness of the harbor at Venice, La. The researchers move into the open gulf about an hour later, past a line of shrimp boats deputized to lay boom along the coastal marshes.
Closer to the Deepwater Horizon site, the water takes on a foreboding gray pallor tinged with a rainbow-like sheen. Soon, the oil begins swirling around the boat and the seascape smells like an auto mechanic's garage.
Strewn among the oil and seaweed are human flotsam: an orange hardhat, a pie pan, a wire coat hanger, yellow margarine-tub lids, a black-and-green ashtray. The crew has found papers - long at sea on global currents - bearing inscriptions in Spanish, Arabic, Greek and Chinese.
The only sound that breaks the stillness is the deep thrum of the motors of the large charter boat and a small skiff carrying the turtle researchers. From dawn until nearly dusk, across sargassum islands that normally are alive with birds looking for crabs and snails - bridal terns, shearwaters, storm-petrels - only one bird is seen.
"What's amazing is there's so little bird life out here right now. Either they've moved on, or the oiling has had a tremendous impact," said Kate Sampson, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who is part of the turtle rescue team.
"We saw a few yesterday. We saw a few laughing gulls fly by. They were oiled, but they could still fly. And we saw a northern gannet, a diving bird. It was oiled too," she said. "I can only imagine that the birds left because the dining hall is closed."
Soon, the rising towers of the Discoverer Enterprise drill ship, which is collecting oil and gas from the damaged well, and the tall rigs boring two relief wells miles into the seabed appear through the haze. A flare of burning natural gas is silhouetted against the gray hull of the ship.
The Premier Explorer, which is helping coordinate cleanup operations at the broken well, announces the day's burn box: A 500-square-mile field within which 16 controlled burns will be conducted.
In the days since the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, more than 5 million gallons of oil have been consumed in more than 165 burns.
"The real issue is to stop this thing at the source, do maximum skimming, in-situ burning - deal with it as far off shore as possible, and do everything you can to keep it from getting to shore, because once it's into the marshes, quite frankly, I think we would all agree there's no good solution at that point," Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told reporters last week.
But the burn operations have proved particularly excruciating for the turtle researchers, who have been trolling the same lines of oil and seaweed as the boom boats, hoping to pull turtles out of the sargassum before they are burned alive.
Much of the wildlife here seems doomed in any case. "We've seen the oil covering the turtles so thick they could barely move, could hardly lift their heads," Witherington said. "I won't pretend to know which is the nastiest."
Yet in one case, the crew had to fall back and watch as skimmers gathered up a long line of sargassum that hadn't yet been searched - and which they believe was full of turtles that might have been saved.
"In a perfect world, they'd gather up the material and let us search it before they burned it," Witherington said. "But that connection hasn't been made. The lines of communication aren't there."
The smoke starts rising on the horizon at midday. The two boats carrying the researchers head in different directions, hoping to find and rescue a few more turtles before their mission wraps up. They find 11, all of them heavily speckled with oil.
Each day, the chances of rescues grow smaller. That there are still so many left stranded in the oil without food is a small miracle. Their long-term chances "are zero," Witherington said.
"Turtles just take a long time to die."
By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2010
Reporting from the Gulf of Mexico -
Here on the open ocean, 12 miles from ground zero of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the gulf is hovering between life and death.
The large strands of sargassum seaweed atop the ocean are normally noisy with birds and thick with crustaceans, small fish and sea turtles. But now this is a silent panorama, heavy with the smell of oil.
There are no birds. The seaweed is soaked in rust-colored crude and chemical dispersant. It is devoid of life except for the occasional juvenile sea turtle, speckled with oil and clinging to the only habitat it knows. Thick ribbons of oil spread out through the sea like the strips in egg flower soup, gorgeous and deadly.
A few dead fish float in the water, though dolphin-fish, tuna, flying fish and the occasional shark can still be seen swimming near the surface, threading their way through the wavy, sometimes iridescent gobs of crude.
"This is devastating. I mean literally, it's terrible. All this should be pretty much blue water, and - look at it. It just looks bad," said Kevin Aderhold, a longtime charter fishing captain who has been taking a team of researchers deep into the gulf every day to rescue oil-soaked sea turtles.
"When this first happened, a lot of us were like, they'll cap that thing and we'll be out fishing again. Now reality's set in. Look around you. This is long-term. This'll be here for-ev-er."
And then it gets worse. When the weather is calm and the sea is placid, ships trailing fireproof booms corral the black oil, the coated seaweed and whatever may be caught in it, and torch it into hundred-foot flames, sending plumes of smoke skyward in ebony mushrooms. This patch of unmarked ocean gets designated over the radio as "the burn box."
Wildlife researchers operating here, in the regions closest to the spill, are witnesses to a disquieting choice: Protecting shorebirds, delicate marshes and prime tourist beaches along the coast by stopping the oil before it moves ashore has meant the largely unseen sacrifice of some wildlife out at sea, poisoned with chemical dispersants and sometimes boiled by the burning of spilled oil on the water's surface.
"It reflects the conventional wisdom of oil spills: If they just keep the oil out at sea, the harm will be minimal. And I disagree with that completely," said Blair Witherington, a research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who has been part of the sea turtle rescue mission.
By unhappy coincidence, the same convergences of ocean currents that create long mats of sargassum - nurturing countless crabs, slugs and surface fish that are crucial food for turtles, birds and larger fish - also coalesce the oil, creating islands of death sometimes 30 miles long.
"Most of the Gulf of Mexico is a desert. Nothing out there to live on. It's all concentrated in these oases," Witherington said.
"Ordinarily, the sargassum is a nice, golden color. You shake it, and all kinds of life comes out: shrimp, crabs, worms, sea slugs. The place is really just bursting with life. It's the base of the food chain. And these areas we're seeing here by comparison are quite dead," he said.
"It's amazing. We'll see flying fish, and they'll land in this stuff and just get stuck."
Hardest hit of all, it appears, are the sea jellies and snails that drift along the gulf's surface, some of the most important food sources for sea turtles.
"These animals drift into the oil lines and it's like flies on fly paper," Witherington said. "As far as I can tell, that whole fauna is just completely wiped out."
The turtle rescue team sets out at 6 a.m. in the muggy warm stillness of the harbor at Venice, La. The researchers move into the open gulf about an hour later, past a line of shrimp boats deputized to lay boom along the coastal marshes.
Closer to the Deepwater Horizon site, the water takes on a foreboding gray pallor tinged with a rainbow-like sheen. Soon, the oil begins swirling around the boat and the seascape smells like an auto mechanic's garage.
Strewn among the oil and seaweed are human flotsam: an orange hardhat, a pie pan, a wire coat hanger, yellow margarine-tub lids, a black-and-green ashtray. The crew has found papers - long at sea on global currents - bearing inscriptions in Spanish, Arabic, Greek and Chinese.
The only sound that breaks the stillness is the deep thrum of the motors of the large charter boat and a small skiff carrying the turtle researchers. From dawn until nearly dusk, across sargassum islands that normally are alive with birds looking for crabs and snails - bridal terns, shearwaters, storm-petrels - only one bird is seen.
"What's amazing is there's so little bird life out here right now. Either they've moved on, or the oiling has had a tremendous impact," said Kate Sampson, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who is part of the turtle rescue team.
"We saw a few yesterday. We saw a few laughing gulls fly by. They were oiled, but they could still fly. And we saw a northern gannet, a diving bird. It was oiled too," she said. "I can only imagine that the birds left because the dining hall is closed."
Soon, the rising towers of the Discoverer Enterprise drill ship, which is collecting oil and gas from the damaged well, and the tall rigs boring two relief wells miles into the seabed appear through the haze. A flare of burning natural gas is silhouetted against the gray hull of the ship.
The Premier Explorer, which is helping coordinate cleanup operations at the broken well, announces the day's burn box: A 500-square-mile field within which 16 controlled burns will be conducted.
In the days since the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, more than 5 million gallons of oil have been consumed in more than 165 burns.
"The real issue is to stop this thing at the source, do maximum skimming, in-situ burning - deal with it as far off shore as possible, and do everything you can to keep it from getting to shore, because once it's into the marshes, quite frankly, I think we would all agree there's no good solution at that point," Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told reporters last week.
But the burn operations have proved particularly excruciating for the turtle researchers, who have been trolling the same lines of oil and seaweed as the boom boats, hoping to pull turtles out of the sargassum before they are burned alive.
Much of the wildlife here seems doomed in any case. "We've seen the oil covering the turtles so thick they could barely move, could hardly lift their heads," Witherington said. "I won't pretend to know which is the nastiest."
Yet in one case, the crew had to fall back and watch as skimmers gathered up a long line of sargassum that hadn't yet been searched - and which they believe was full of turtles that might have been saved.
"In a perfect world, they'd gather up the material and let us search it before they burned it," Witherington said. "But that connection hasn't been made. The lines of communication aren't there."
The smoke starts rising on the horizon at midday. The two boats carrying the researchers head in different directions, hoping to find and rescue a few more turtles before their mission wraps up. They find 11, all of them heavily speckled with oil.
Each day, the chances of rescues grow smaller. That there are still so many left stranded in the oil without food is a small miracle. Their long-term chances "are zero," Witherington said.
"Turtles just take a long time to die."
Over 5,000 Turtles Destroyed Annually In Sri Lanka Due To Human Activities (Via HerpDigest)
Over 5,000 Turtles Destroyed Annually In Sri Lanka Due To Human Activities
COLOMBO, Friday 18 June 2010 (Bernama) -- More than 5,000 turtle are getting destroyed annually in Sri Lanka and are threatened with extinction due to callous human activities in the coastal belt, China's Xinhua news agency quoted Turtle Conservation Project Chairman Thushan Kapurusinghe as saying.
He said turtles and turtle eggs are also collected for human consumption, and most often the female turtles who come to lay eggs become victims in this way. "Due to this, a new turtle generation is not emerging. This has led to the speedy extinction of turtles," Xinhua cited him as saying to a local daily on Friday.
Kapurusinghe added that turtle deaths are also reported by swallowing polythene floating on the sea water, after being mistakenly identified as jelly fish. The flashes of light emanated by vehicles and hotels have turned back the female turtles who come to the beach to lay eggs, he said.
Besides human activities, Kapurusinghe said the large-scale coral destruction for lime production has deprived the sea turtles of their natural rich food areas in the sea. "The coastal erosion has also accelerated due to sand mining in the beaches. The loss of coastal belt has deprived the turtles of their natural breeding spots, and sometimes the turtle eggs get destroyed by washing away to the sea.
"A large number of turtles also get stuck on modern fishing nets and drown," he said. From the seven turtle species in the world, five are found in Sri Lanka, namely The Green Turtle, Olive Ridley Turtle, Leatherback Turtle, Hawksbill Turtle and Loggerhead Turtle.
Among them Leatherback and Hawksbill Turtles are highly endangered species. According to the Fauna and Flora Act of Sri Lanka, destruction, egg collection, possessing and transportation of turtles are offenses.
Places like Rekawa and Ussangoda-Godawaya are declared as Turtle Sanctuaries. A turtle conservation project is being conducted in Rekawa with the support of the community in the area.
COLOMBO, Friday 18 June 2010 (Bernama) -- More than 5,000 turtle are getting destroyed annually in Sri Lanka and are threatened with extinction due to callous human activities in the coastal belt, China's Xinhua news agency quoted Turtle Conservation Project Chairman Thushan Kapurusinghe as saying.
He said turtles and turtle eggs are also collected for human consumption, and most often the female turtles who come to lay eggs become victims in this way. "Due to this, a new turtle generation is not emerging. This has led to the speedy extinction of turtles," Xinhua cited him as saying to a local daily on Friday.
Kapurusinghe added that turtle deaths are also reported by swallowing polythene floating on the sea water, after being mistakenly identified as jelly fish. The flashes of light emanated by vehicles and hotels have turned back the female turtles who come to the beach to lay eggs, he said.
Besides human activities, Kapurusinghe said the large-scale coral destruction for lime production has deprived the sea turtles of their natural rich food areas in the sea. "The coastal erosion has also accelerated due to sand mining in the beaches. The loss of coastal belt has deprived the turtles of their natural breeding spots, and sometimes the turtle eggs get destroyed by washing away to the sea.
"A large number of turtles also get stuck on modern fishing nets and drown," he said. From the seven turtle species in the world, five are found in Sri Lanka, namely The Green Turtle, Olive Ridley Turtle, Leatherback Turtle, Hawksbill Turtle and Loggerhead Turtle.
Among them Leatherback and Hawksbill Turtles are highly endangered species. According to the Fauna and Flora Act of Sri Lanka, destruction, egg collection, possessing and transportation of turtles are offenses.
Places like Rekawa and Ussangoda-Godawaya are declared as Turtle Sanctuaries. A turtle conservation project is being conducted in Rekawa with the support of the community in the area.
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