Loggerhead sea turtle eggs are saved from the Gulf
Biologist Lorna Patrick, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has begun an operation of moving loggerhead sea turtle eggs to save thousands of threatened baby turtles from certain death in the oiled Gulf of Mexico. The eggs are placed into coolers, loaded in FedEx temperature controlled trucks and moved to a Florida’s Kennedy Space Center warehouse where they will incubate and hatch. Afterwards they will be released into the Atlantic Ocean. The rescue operation will have to deal with 800 nests across Alabama and Florida beaches. These will be dug in the following months, which means that about 70,000 eggs will be saved from disaster. The biologists fear that if they do not move the nests the eggs will hatch and the little turtles will swim into the oily water that would probably kill an entire generation of a species that is already in danger of extinction.
Jeff Trindahl, director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, says that the some of the hatchlings might die anyway from the stress of being moved, but there was no other option. The special means of transport, coolers and other expenses associated with this operation will probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, which BP will be asked to pay for.
Loggerhead turtles lay about 125 eggs in each nest and even without an oil spill the majority of baby turtles do not make it to maturity; experts say that only one in a thousand lives to reproduce.
