advancing marine education and conservation
Marine Turtles
Marine turtles have been swimming the oceans for at least 120 million years (Cadena and Parham 2015). Paddlellike limbs, heart-shaped shells and salt glands characterize these widely dispersed marine reptiles. They generally feed on jellyfish, sponges and other sea creatures. One species, the Green sea turtle, feeds on sea grasses. Female marine turtles crawl on to beaches at night, dig holes with their paddlellike limbs and lay their eggs. After incubating and maturing, young turtles hatch, dig their way out of the sand and crawl to the water.
Marine turtle species include Leatherback, Loggerhead, Green, Hawksbill, Kemps Ridley, Olive Ridley and Flatback turtles. Six out of the 7 species of marine turtles are classified as endangered or critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
The main threats to marine turtle populations include fisheries bycatch, harvesting, coastal construction, pollution (light pollution, marine debris ingestion and entanglement, oil pollution), beach erosion and predation (Bolten et al. 2011). Important threats in the future most likely will be related to global change such sea level rise (Fish et al. 2004, Fuentes et al. 2010).
Conservation efforts around the world are focusing on reducing fisheries bycatch, harvesting, predation, marine debris and light pollution, protecting and restoring habitat and mitigating global change by finding solutions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and sequester carbon.
References
Bolten, A.B., Crowder, L.B., Dodd, M.G., MacPherson, S.L., Musick, J.A., Schroeder, B.A., Witherington, B.E., Long, K.J. and Snover, M.L., 2011. Quantifying multiple threats to endangered species: an example from loggerhead sea turtles. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 9(5), pp.295-301.
Cadena, E.A. and Parham, J.F., 2015. Oldest known marine turtle? A new protostegid from the Lower Cretaceous of Colombia. PaleoBios, 32(1).
Fish, M.R., Cote, I.M., Gill, J.A., Jones, A.P., Renshoff, S. and Watkinson, A.R., 2005. Predicting the impact of sea level rise on Caribbean Sea turtle nesting habitat. Conservation biology, 19(2), pp.482-491.
Fuentes, M.M.P.B., Limpus, C.J., Hamann, M. and Dawson, J., 2010. Potential impacts of projected sea level rise on sea turtle rookeries. Aquatic conservation: marine and freshwater ecosystems, 20(2), pp.132-139.