Sea turtles had been already navigating the oceans when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Nonetheless these historic creatures face an uncertain future. All seven sea turtle species are presently endangered or threatened, notes Christine Figgener, a German-born conservation biologist who has been working in Costa Rica for the earlier 16 years.
The number of nesting females on the seashores she analysis is down higher than 80 % from when she first arrived there, Figgener acknowledged in an interview with Yale Setting 360. It’s part of a world decline pushed by a super storm of threats along with plastics throughout the ocean, chemical air air pollution, industrial fishing, unregulated coastal enchancment, and native climate change.
Figgener, 40, gained worldwide consideration when a video that she took of a sea turtle with a plastic straw lodged in its nostril went viral. The video helped launch a movement to eradicate plastic straws, which led to bans in Seattle and completely different cities world large. Nonetheless she says that’s solely a start. “Our world, our oceans are lots too difficult to say that if we merely stop consuming fish or using plastic straws or what have you ever ever, sea turtles shall be safe,” she acknowledged.
Her new information, My Life With Sea Turtles, shall be printed in May. In it, she argues that good science on turtle ecology together with the necessity to wash up our oceans can save the endangered reptiles. “Turtles have relatively lots going for them. They’re extraordinarily resilient,” she instructed e360. “If everyone knows ample in regards to the ecology of the species, the place they feed, the place they mate, we’re in a position to give you worthwhile strategies to save lots of plenty of them.”
Christine Figgener with a toddler sea turtle.
Thierry Bois
Yale Setting 360: You’ve acknowledged that when you had been in kindergarten, you instructed your classmates that you just wanted to be an ocean explorer. What’s it in regards to the sea that fascinated you every then and now?
Christine Figgener: We now have explored a number of the planet. There usually are not any clear areas left apart from the ocean. I actually like mysteries, and that’s why I grew to turn out to be a researcher, to find them. In a world the place everyone knows lots, not realizing one factor creates a bit little bit of magic that every one of us need. All of us dwell for it.
e360: How did you come to evaluation sea turtles notably?
Figgener: My first curiosity was humpback whales. Nonetheless as a grasp’s scholar I had the prospect to go to Costa Rica to take part in a leatherback problem. I’d certainly not seen a sea turtle nesting sooner than. It is this historic creature greater than I am that goes via a life program that they have been following for a whole lot of 1000’s of years. I quickly fell in love with sea turtles and felt guilt, in a way, too. I indicate they have been spherical for such an especially prolonged time interval. Proper right here they’re on the point of extinction on account of us folks. I merely felt — that may’t happen, on the very least not in my lifetime.
“We now have seen baby turtles getting caught in water bottles. We seen a female who obtained lodged in a automotive tire and drowned.”
e360: What are just a few of the challenges for nesting sea turtles in Costa Rica?
Figgener: One in all many huge factors proper right here is that we nonetheless have people consuming sea turtle meat and eggs, and so they’re accumulating hawksbill shells, which are carved to make jewelry and completely different trinkets. We even have an unlimited disadvantage with erosion [of beaches where turtles nest] on account of rising sea ranges.
Nesting season is just now beginning proper right here on the Caribbean coast. We’re seeing one or two females nesting a night. After I first began my work proper right here [in 2007] we had been seeing 800 leatherback females nesting in a season. Now we’re all the way in which all the way down to 50 to 150 on our seaside. That downward sample is happening in all places on the earth.
e360: You excavate sea turtle eggs and rebury them. Why?
Figgener: We do this on account of poachers would see the tracks throughout the sand of the nesting females and uncover the eggs if we left them the place they’d been. Or in some circumstances the ocean would wash them away within the occasion that they’d been buried too low down on the seaside. So what we do is we put a little bit of bag beneath the female whereas she is laying the eggs and we take the eggs to a safer place to rebury them. We’re cautious to depart no observe, so the poachers gained’t know the place they’re.
e360: Your work grew to turn out to be broadly recognized when you launched a video of an olive ridley sea turtle with a plastic straw caught in his nostril. How did you come all through him?
Figgener: We had been conducting a study of mating olive ridley turtles on the Pacific Coast. We measured the turtles, took genetic samples, after which put them once more throughout the water. This one male had one factor uncommon in his nostril. We thought at first it could possibly be a barnacle or a tube worm. Nonetheless as soon as we started pulling it out and snipped off a little bit of piece, it grew to turn out to be clear that it was plastic straw.
When sea turtles feed, they swallow quite a few seawater and expel it via their nostrils. We count on that the straw obtained caught throughout the nostril which means.
e360: Plastic straws are hardly the one hazard. Can you inform us about one other stuff you’ve seen?
Figgener: We now have seen baby turtles getting caught in water bottles. We seen a female who obtained lodged in a automotive tire and drowned. We’ve seen all sorts of entanglements in plastic baggage and sacks. We seen a sea turtle that had dragged an entire fishing rod onto the seaside.
As quickly as, I watched this female leatherback turtle on our seaside attempting to place her eggs. She was pressing and pressing and nothing received right here. Lastly I felt with my arms in her cloaca, and there was one factor humorous in there. I tugged on it, and it received right here out, a plastic trash bag. She had ingested it, and he or she was lucky ample that it went via the whole intestinal tract. After I eradicated the bag, she was lastly able to lay her eggs.
“We’re shedding, conservatively, an entire bunch of a whole lot of sea turtles as incidental bycatch in fishing nets yearly.”
e360: Turtles usually mistake plastic baggage for jellyfish, which is definitely one in all their meals. Isn’t that correct?
Figgener: Plastic baggage do look relatively lots like jellyfish. Together with that, the longer plastic floats via the ocean, the additional of a biofilm varieties on its ground, and there is rising scientific information that it smells like meals to the turtles.
e360: Aren’t fishing nets moreover a threat?
Figgener: Utterly, industrial fishing is a critical threat. We’re shedding, conservatively, an entire bunch of a whole lot of sea turtles as incidental bycatch in fishing nets yearly. We even have the problem of so-called ghost nets, nets that had been misplaced or dumped and abandoned. As quickly as a turtle will get entangled in a ghost net, they drag this huge weight behind them. In some circumstances, they don’t seem to be able to switch the least bit. It moreover leads to many nasty cuts, amputations, and limb loss in sea turtles. Even a single fishing line wrapped spherical a flipper can decrease off blood flow into.
e360: Can you focus on how air air pollution has impacted sea turtle populations.
Figgener: Petroleum will get into the ocean via spills and completely different strategies. Fertilizers and pesticides wash into rivers and end up throughout the oceans. In inexperienced turtles there is a sort of most cancers known as fibropapillomatosis, which creates cauliflower-shaped tumors on tender tissue, identical to the eyes and the pores and pores and skin, and is principally triggered by fertilizer runoff. This runoff moreover creates ineffective zones throughout the ocean and toxic purple tides the place the turtles will feed on the algae blooms and finally die.
An olive ridley sea turtle hatchling heads for the ocean in Lhoknga Seashore, Indonesia.
CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN / AFP by means of Getty Images
e360: There are seven most important species of sea turtle. All of them are presently endangered or threatened. Why have their numbers been declining so fast? What set off is most liable for this?
Figgener: I get requested this question relatively lots, nevertheless I imagine it is misleading on account of it offers people the idea that in the event that they solely restore this one topic, the problem shall be solved. Our world, our oceans are lots too difficult to say that if we merely stop consuming fish or using plastic straws or what have you ever ever, sea turtles shall be safe.
e360: We’ve been talking in regards to the points. Nonetheless you moreover write about an unbelievable success story. The Kemp ridley sea turtle was launched once more from the brink of extinction. How did that happen?
Figgener: A great deal of points received right here collectively throughout the favor of the Kemp ridleys. Once more throughout the late 70s and 80s there have been only a few hundred nesting females left throughout the Gulf of Mexico. These turtles often ended up throughout the nets of shrimp trawlers. In response, the U.S. mandated a turtle excluding gadget hooked as much as the nets which decreased bycatch by about 90 %.
“Sea turtles have relatively lots going for them. They’re extraordinarily resilient. They’ve been spherical for a whole lot of 1000’s of years.”
One different issue is there was an unlimited exploitation of eggs occurring in Mexico. There have been moreover slaughterhouses for Kemp ridleys and olive ridleys there. These slaughterhouses had been closed, and egg assortment was prohibited by the Mexican authorities.
Some eggs had been transported from Mexico to Texas the place [a nesting colony was re-established at Padre Island National Seashore.] And there was a “head start program” throughout the U.S. by means of which eggs had been incubated in a managed environment after which grown until they’d been the size of a plate and not so prone to predation as tiny baby sea turtles are once they’re born. These turtles had been then launched into the Gulf.
e360: Does the success of these initiatives give you hope? Can or not it is reproduced elsewhere?
Figgener: Information-driven approaches are undoubtedly the way in which through which to go. Turtles have relatively lots going for them. They’re extraordinarily resilient. They’ve been spherical for a whole lot of 1000’s of years. If everyone knows ample in regards to the ecology of the species, the place they feed, the place they mate and so forth, it would happen. We’re in a position to give you worthwhile strategies to save lots of plenty of them. So that’s why I’m happy that we would like good scientific information, together with the necessity to take environment friendly measures for his or her security.
A girl from town of Barra de Santiago in El Salvador shelters the eggs of an olive ridley sea turtle.
Alex Pena / Anadolu Firm by means of Getty Images
e360: You based mostly the Costa Rican Alliance for Sea Turtle Conservation and Science (COASTS). I do know you’ve been very important of some huge conservation groups that come to creating nations practically with a colonial perspective. You make some extent of teaching Costa Ricans to do the science.
Figgener: I’m presently working together with Ariana Oporta. I met her when she was spherical 14 years outdated. She always wanted to be a biologist. I don’t assume people understand the type of obstacles people like her face. Most of the people schools in rural Costa Rica aren’t excellent. Nonetheless she managed to get herself two scholarships to most important universities the place she was expert as a marine biologist. After I received all the way down to found COASTS, she was the actual individual I wanted to do it with.
As a German I could possibly be a bit sturdy at cases. Ariana is the face of the group. The locals usually don’t perception the scientists who can be found in from the floor. Ariana helps to bridge these gaps.
e360: How have attitudes of native people modified?
Figgener: The kids who we did environmental education with, who we taught about sea turtles, they’re much more open-minded. There is a generational change. We always have school college students from exterior Costa Rica, and vacationers. I imagine that keenness that makes people journey all that method to see a nesting sea turtle undoubtedly modifications one factor throughout the mindset of the people who dwell proper right here. It moreover reveals them you possibly can make more cash with a dwell turtle than by consuming the meat or selling the eggs.
This interview was edited for measurement and readability.