Most Endangered Species Of Sea Turtles Or The Fight Against Human Cruelty
How many of you happen to have a turtle in your apartment, considering it to be your pet? How many of you have ever bought a sea turtle shape object, jewelery or anything reminding you of one? I for one, have a close friend who developed a passion for sea turtles and surrounds herself with all kind of turtle shaped objects.
I find them to be very interesting animals and very beautiful at the same time.
Yet, there is more to it than this. As you all probably know there is a close interconnection between the animals in the open-ocean and coastal ecosystems. The marine turtles fill an important ecological role by controlling prey species and themselves providing food to larger predators. Well known for eating box jellyfish, being immune to their deadly sting, they manage to keep tropical beaches safe for humans. Therefore their sudden disappearance could prove to have widespread effects.
As if they were aware of people’s intention to destroy them, sea turtles have developed a natural defense sense, if one may call it so, and as such, they lay a large number of eggs. Even so, due to increased human harvesting and disturbance of nesting beaches, we manage to break down their defense. But, no matter how evil we prove to be when it comes to turtle eggs, we are not the only predators, domestic dogs and pigs are too.
Being considered to be some sort of delicacy in some parts of the world, an aphrodisiac and energizing protein in Latin America, used in traditional Asian medicines, it is no wonder most of the sea-turtle species are endangered. If you ever decide to visit Indonesia, you will most probably be able to find in their shops turtle souvenirs, turtle-skin bags, jewelry made from shells, and stuffed turtles, all of these only for commercial purposes.
Have you ever considered eating a turtle soup? I ask you this, as many Europeans seem to have developed a growing taste for such soups. Have you ever even wondered how it tastes? Probably, many of you didn’t only think about it but probably ordered one in a restaurant offering what many consider to be a delicacy.
Yet, I can also bet that those of you, who ate one, didn’t think about the fact that most of the sea-turtles have become endangered species.
More than a third of the world’s 280 freshwater turtle species are threatened with extinction, according to a new analysis by Conservation International (CI).
As Dr Peter van Dijk, the director of CI’s Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Conservation Programme, declared ”These are animals that take 15 to 20 years to reach maturity and then live for another 30 to 40 years, putting a clutch of eggs in the ground every year. They play the odds, hoping that in that 50 year lifetime, some of their hatchlings will somehow evade predators and go on to breed themselves. But if you take these animals out before they’ve reached 15 and can reproduce, it all ends there.”
Despite of all the things mentioned by all sorts of research programs we continue to hunt them and track their eggs and finally we might turn out to be their very reason of mass extermination.
When I say we I mean to say people who do this, consciously or unconsciously.
Despite their keen sense of defense, they stand no chance now in front of long-line fishing, or hooks and traps. The abandoned fishing nets, in which they can become entangled, also give them no chance to survive.
The Leatherback, Kemp’s ridley, and Hawksbill turtles are listed as critically endangered.
The leatherback sea turtle took its name from the aspect of its shell, which is said to be like a thick leathery skin. Despite the fact, that it is the largest sea turtle, or perhaps especially because of this, it is one of the most endangered turtle species. It can grow up to 6.5 feet (2 m) long and reach the significant weigh of 1,400 pounds (636 kg).
Being considered to be a species able to live in almost all the oceans of the world, it nests on tropical beaches in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans.
This sea turtle species has proven to be particularly important since its food consists mainly in jellyfish. Being what can generally be considered a lonely creature, they have also been reported to eat fish, mollusks, squid, sea urchins, and other marine creatures and gather in areas dominated by jellyfish.
Human cruelty and somehow primitive nature can be one more time seen in the causes that may lead to leatherback sea turtles’ death. They are killed to be transformed into oil for caulking boats in the Persian Gulf and for use in oil lamps in Papua New Guinea, as well as for medicinal use. Therefore various reasons, which prove one more time that we were born to be natural predators, destroying the environment, and as such leading to our own destruction in time.
Being the opposite of leatherback sea turtles, Kemp’s ridley turtles are considered to be the smallest marine turtles in the world, weighting on average around 100 pounds (45 kg). Unlike leatherback sea turtles, they enjoy gathering in crowds, displaying one of the most unique synchronized nesting habits in the natural world.
They usually gather near Rancho Nuevo, Mexico, in the state of Tamaulipas. They are most widely known and famous for what locals call “arribada”, meaning arrival in Spanish, as the females come wave upon wave to nest.
Their diet consists mainly of swimming crabs, but may also include fish, jellyfish, and an array of mollusks.
They have turned out to be an endangered species due to the fact that most often they get trapped into fishing gears, gill nets or traps that are placed in the Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic.
Compared to the other two endangered species, the hawksbill turtle is small to medium-sized. Usually weighting 100-150 lbs (45 to 68 kg) when they reach adulthood, they can also grow as large as 200 lbs (91 kg).The beak-like mouth gives the species its name. Their primary food source consists in sponges, as well as other invertebrates.
They will most probably be seen in Puerto Rico and its associated islands and in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Being able to migrate on long distances, the largest populations of hawksbills may also be found in the Caribbean, the Republic of Seychelles, Indonesia, and Australia.
As this turtle species highly relies on coral reef communities for food resources and habitat, their end may come as a result of the fact that people contribute to the destruction of such communities. Humans can alter coral reefs by polluting waters or by such accidents as toxic spills and vessel groundings.
If you ever decide to visit Dominican Republic or Jamaica you may come across a person selling you a hawksbill turtle in exchange for a large sum of money. People seem to like danger there if we were to consider the prohibition on harvesting hawksbills and eggs that has been instituted there.
The Olive ridley, Loggerhead, and Green turtles are considered endangered.
Even though, it is considered to be the most abundant sea turtle in the world, with an estimated 800,000 nesting females annually, the Olive ridley is still an endangered species.
Just like the Kemp’s ridley turtles, they gather in large groups off shore of nesting beaches. It is all about the same phenomenon known as “arribada”.
Their worldwide decline is due to the long-term collection of eggs and killing of adults on nesting beaches.
Loggerheads were named for their relatively large heads, which support powerful jaws and enable them to feed on hard-shelled prey, such as whelks and conch.
This species is to be found in the temperate and tropical regions of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.
They find their death mainly in human traps and fishing gears. Therefore, we may consider ourselves directly responsible for their death.
Green turtles are the largest of all the hard-shelled sea turtles, but have a comparatively small head. In their case a serious ongoing source of mortality can be considered to be the traps and the fishing gears, as well as the increasing harvesting.
Given the fact that almost all the turtle species are considered to be endangered ones or critically endangered, we all seem to like tracking and hunting them down. This way we make ourselves directly responsible for the destruction of the marine ecosystem.
So, the question is: Will you even consider refusing a turtle soup next time when you come to Europe?
