On the Path of a Hatchling: Sea Turtles and Their Survival on a Warming Planet

By Luisanna Carrillo-Rubio

Sea turtles are practically living fossils living on Earth. They were once abundant in the planet’s oceans and have managed to adapt to survive as species for over 110 million years, outliving other reptiles, including the dinosaurs. Even 110 million years of evolution, however, could not prepare these spectacular species to withstand rampant shore development, unsustainable fishing practices, poaching and, ultimately, global warming and its impacts. Out of the seven species of sea turtles remaining on our planet today—the leatherback, hawksbill, loggerhead, Kemp’s Ridley, olive Ridley, green, and flatback—all are threatened, endangered, or “critically endangered,” according to the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) Red List.

Sea turtles are not alone in this ominous predicament. At present, according to a recent communiqué issued by the IUCN, “one in four mammals, one in eight birds, one third of all amphibians and 70% of the world’s assessed plants on the 2007 IUCN Red List are in jeopardy.” According to Tony Juniper, Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, “we now face an extinction episode on this planet comparable to that which marked the end of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago, largely driven by habitat change, driven by the release of pollution to the environment, [and by] global warming.” Harvard Professor Emeritus, E.O. Wilson, concurs with this verdict admonishing that “the crisis we face now is that the rate of extinction is accelerating, and that it will really reach biblical proportions in a few decades” (quoted from the “Saving Species” fragment from the BBC series Planet Earth).

Global warming, climate change, and human-made challenges aside, sea turtles face some serious challenges during their natural life cycles. Female sea turtles are notorious for making extremely long journeys to return to their places of birth to lay their eggs. Let’s consider as an illustrating example the 5,000 female green turtles that travel from Brazil to nest on the beaches of the tiny seven-mile-wide Island of Ascension in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The turtles will travel during six entire months, 5,000 miles each way, during which they don’t eat once, to go out at night to lay their eggs on the beaches of Ascension Island. Weeks later, the very vulnerable hatchlings emerge trying to reach the ocean, where many will drown upon reaching pounding waves, or may be eaten by awaiting predators. Those female green turtles that do survive, will one day make the same epic journey to return to their hatching sites. Amazingly, scientists still don’t understand how these animals find their way back in the many thousands of miles of open ocean to the very same beaches where they were first hatched generation after generation (According to the “Coasts” episode of the BBC’s The Blue Planet series). Today, “however, sea level rise threatens beach habitat and turtle reproduction will be hard hit,” according to the Sea Turtle Research Program of World Wildlife Fund).

The survival rate of hatchlings is always quite low. For the flatbacks, for instance, only one out of 100 hatchlings will grow to adulthood to make the same migration to its nesting grounds, in the case of female hatchlings. Other estimates are even less optimistic. According to some scientific calculations as to how many hatchlings make it to a ripe adult age, “only one in 1,000 hatchlings will survive (anywhere from 20-50 years) to become an adult sea turtle,” considering all the remaining species. However bleak this scenario may seem, we must consider the impacts that anthropogenic climate change is starting to have on sea turtles. One of the main changes that will undoubtedly impair their survival rate is sea level rise and the deterioration of the coastlines. However, there are many impacts that climate change is having on the oceans, weather and temperatures, which will make the recovery of the species’ numbers very difficult indeed. Sadly, sea turtles could soon become—like countless other recently extinct species—yet another fossil in the great mausoleum of evolution, climate change and rampant human destruction.

Threat Number 1: The Loss of Nesting Beaches

The numbers of some sea turtles, for instance the majestic leatherback, the largest of all sea turtles (shown on figure 5), are plummeting. The IUCN classifies them as “Critically Endangered of Extinction” upon “experiencing a global decline of at least 80% of its population over the last 10 years. Some of the most important leatherback populations” show an even more dramatic drop, since “along the Pacific coast of Mexico, [they] have shown a 90% decline over the last decade”. This catastrophic decline is due to accidental captures in fishing nets, poaching, eggs’ exploitation and particularly, to the destruction of the leatherbacks’ nesting beaches. To illustrate what a significant population collapse this entails for one single species, 90% would be the equivalent of a 5.98 billion people (homo sapiens species) dying within one decade out of the 6.65 billion that now inhabit the planet.

The loss of nesting sites is due to several reasons. Massive resort and tourism development has been particularly damaging. Also, the coastal regions in which sea turtles nest are increasingly experiencing stronger storms, which destroy already laid eggs, or damage the beaches where the sea turtles return to nest. Furthermore, the higher the sea level, the more destructive the storms can potentially be. As a result from extreme weather, communities in coastal regions have had to build structures to prevent the floods from damaging their property, or to prevent further erosion of the coastlines, right where sea turtles have nested generation after generation. However devastating these developments have been, the worst is yet to come. And, it is coming faster than previously thought.

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) scientists published a study on September, 10th, 2007, in which the authors “found that with a moderate .5 m rise in sea level rise, a third of the total current beach area could be lost. Among the 13 beaches that were surveyed one particularly vulnerable beach could lose almost its entire suitable sea turtle habitat.” The conclusions reached by the scientific team warns that “this magnitude of beach habitat loss could literally be the point of no return for populations of already critically endangered sea turtles, such as the hawksbill turtle”.

According to an OCEANA study, extreme weather has always been a threat to sea turtles’ nests. However, sea turtles adapted to this threat by having large numbers and spreading very widely their nests over geographical areas. This is no longer possible because of their dramatically reduced numbers and the increased loss of nesting beaches due to rising sea-levels and urbanization. The report concludes: “With sea turtle populations already diminished, nesting habitat shrinking and growing threats from climate change, including increasing threats from extreme weather, the strategy sea turtles have evolved for surviving extreme weather may no longer work”.

Beaches are facing not only the danger that sea level rise and potentially more devastating storms entail, but also the detrimental effects of mass tourism. The WWF recently surveyed the Mediterranean Sea and its coastlines, a region that is—second only to the tropical seas—the one with “the highest percentage of endemic species.” Namely, “20% of all [its] marine species can only be found in this basin. Very endangered species dwell in its waters: the monk seal, the loggerhead and the green turtle as well as several species of cetaceans”.

The Mediterranean’s fragile ecosystems face the input of tourists along with the necessary development, i. e. the construction of hotels, airports, roads, vacation homes, etc. At present, “three-quarters of the sand dunes of the Mediterranean coastline from Spain to Sicily have disappeared mainly as a result of urbanization linked to tourism development. In Italy over 43% of the coastline is completely urbanized mainly linked to tourism development, 28% is partially urbanized and less than 29% is still free of construction. In addition, there are only 6 stretches of coast over 20 km that have no construction and only 33 stretches between 10 and 20 km without construction”.

The development of infrastructure on beaches affects adversely the wildlife which has depended on these very same coastlines for countless generations. “In Zakynthos (Greece), sea turtles have had their coastal nesting grounds disturbed and destroyed by tourism development and tourist behaviour”. Along with sea turtles, the critically endangered Mediterranean monk seal has been pushed to the brink of extinction due to habitat loss, and scientists with WWF conclude that “without dramatic changes, the current tourism pressure will likely drive the species to extinction”. Another implication of tourism is the overuse of resources, such as freshwater. Many countries in the area are experiencing desertification, as water supplies are exacerbated by the tourist inflow into hotels, swimming pools and golf courses. While an average Spanish city dweller may use 250 liters of water daily, a tourist who uses swimming pools and golf courses will consume at least 880 liters per day.

In the Caribbean, the input of tourists as well as the development to accommodate them, has led to tragic losses of biodiversity, according to the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, a leading academic center for the study of the environment. The Caribbean is “a biodiversity hotspot” of great importance. According to the Earth Institute’s recent survey, the world’s 25 biodiversity hotspots “combined make up just 1.4 percent of the planet’s surface, yet harbor over 60 percent of all plant and animal diversity, and are under increasing threats.” The Caribbean Sea is also home to over 1,550 species of corals, fishes, and many other marine species. At present “more than 60 percent of coral reefs in the region are under threats ranging from fishing and coral harvesting to water quality degradation; and the last remaining pristine lands on these islands are being lost to new resorts and golf courses. Without collaboration to balance consumer demand with environmental protection, much of this unique biodiversity will be lost forever”.

The Mediterranean and the Caribbean are not the only regions experiencing such a dramatic loss of nesting beaches for sea turtles. In Florida, where the most important nesting beach of loggerhead sea turtles in the United States is located, 2007 was a record low year in nesting rates, according to the Caribbean Conservation Corporation. Nesting of sea turtles throughout Florida “has declined by nearly 50% since 1998” in the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge in Melbourne, Florida, named after world-renowned sea turtle biologist, Dr. Archie Carr. The Carr Refuge remains to date the best indicator of loggerhead nesting throughout the country.

Loss of loggerhead individuals is due in part to their getting caught in large fishing nets for unsustainable fishing, collisions with boats as the beaches receive more tourists, and the reduction of nesting beaches due to development and anti-erosion barriers. If, after all these obstacles, some nests actually yield some hatchlings, the stranding of hatchlings poses an enormous risk. The hatchlings emerge usually at night to be better concealed from predators to then try to make their way to the ocean. They will follow lights, so “when condominiums and hotels lighting confuses newly-hatched baby sea turtles, they go in the wrong direction away from the beach and die on highways or dry up on scorching parking lots”. The numbers of stranded turtles in the beaches of Florida “have more than doubled during the past decade,” according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute reported that one of the most serious threats for the loggerhead population is the development of beaches when “coastal armoring meant to protect buildings from erosion has resulted in the loss of nesting habitat near natural dunes.” As sea levels rise and tropical storms become more severe, communities in coastal regions will have to take more drastic measures to protect property from damage and, ergo, destroy even more of the remaining sea turtles’ nesting sites.
David Godfrey, Executive Director of the Gainesville, FL-based Caribbean Conservation Corporation, the world’s oldest sea turtle conservation group, has expressed that protecting nesting sites is essential for the survival of sea turtles as species. Often, when sea turtles return to their nesting sites “in many areas of Florida [they] will return to find miles of sea walls and new beachfront development. We [the Caribbean Conservation Corporation scientists] are particularly concerned about a new experimental form of coastal armoring known as geotubes that are installed much farther seaward out on the beach than traditional vertical sea walls.” These are basically 1,000-ton sandbags placed on the most important nesting beaches by people trying to protect their property from rising sea level and ever-stronger tropical storms.

Commercial fishing has also been a significant contributor to the drop in sea turtle population numbers. Unsustainable over-fishing practices worldwide aren’t only taking their toll among sea turtles, but on the entire marine ecosystem, which is anticipated to collapse by mid-century. Scientists writing in the prestigious journal Nature accent that “some populations [of fish] have plummeted by 98% in a generation, meeting the definition of ‘critically endangered’” due to deep-sea fishing, which continues to destroy coral reefs, trap and kill a wide variety of animals. See Figures 1-3 below for the impacts of deep-sea fishing, as well as how deep fishing is performed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1(left): How Bottom Trailing Works.

 

 

 

Figure 2 and Figure 3 (below) : Seafloor before (top) and after (bottom) the trawlers for sea bottom fishing have passed by.

According to an article published in the journal Science, an international team of researchers pointed out that “fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity”. Steve Palumbi, a professor at Stanford University, forewarns that “unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the ocean species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood.” In fact, scientists conclude that the world’s oceans will be completely out of fish by the year 2048, as was covered extensively by several news outlets, including the BBC.

 

 

 

Threat Number 2: Changes in the Ocean Currents Used for Migrations

Sea turtles migrate very long distances to and from the coastal regions of their birth to nest, as well as to their foraging and feeding grounds. To do this, they travel sometimes many thousands of miles, by using the Earth’s magnetic field as a compass to navigate and natural ocean currents to save energy. Last February, 2008, the Associated Press published an article documenting groundbreaking scientific work in tracking a leatherback turtle “that swam from Indonesia to Oregon and back to Hawaii in an epic 13,000-mile search for food”. Unfortunately, “Migrations of this magnitude expose animals to a multitude of risks from fisheries on the high seas,” according to Scott Benson and Peter Dutton, scientists with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service in California.

Figure 4 (below): A Leatherback Sea Turtle—the largest of all sea turtles.

Potentially, however, climate change presents a more serious danger for the life cycles essential for the survival of the species—not just of the leatherbacks—, since sea turtles migrate using natural ocean currents. Climate change and the increase in global temperatures could jeopardize and alter natural oceanic currents, which could change the oceans beyond the possibility of adaptation for sea turtles.

A NASA study issued in 2004, pointed out that “the thawing of ice covering the Arctic could disturb or even halt large currents in the Atlantic Ocean”, and this was determined to be a “paradoxical scenario gaining credibility among many climate scientists.” NASA scientists also pointed out in this study that the amount of heat that these ocean currents deliver, which they estimated to equal “the power generation of a million nuclear power plants,” could cause a dip in temperatures in Europe and North America similar to the ones present during the end of the last ice age, some 20,000 years ago.

 

Figure 5 : An Illustration of the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt.

Many may argue that this extreme scenario may be just a hypothesis, and that any such drastic changes on the planet occur only every many tens of thousands of years—if at all. For instance, “as the world warmed at the end of the last ice age about 13,000 years ago, melting ice sheets appear to have triggered a sudden halt in the Conveyor, throwing the world back into a 1,300 year period of ice-age-like conditions called the ‘Younger Dryas’". However, the earth is changing at an unprecedented speed. “Climate change is causing a dramatic loss of sea ice in the Arctic. 2007 was the lowest year on record, and some scientists now predict the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer by as early as 2013,” according to the OCEANA “Save the Arctic” Working Group. According to a recent survey reported by the National Geographic “The North Pole May Be Ice Free for First Time This Summer.”

As for changes that occurred over 10,000 years ago, we are already witnessing ice shelves collapsing in Antarctica, which has had no precedent in the past 12,000+ years. In 2002, the Larsen B Ice Shelf collapsed (totaling an area larger than Rhode Island), releasing “enough ice for about 12 trillion 10 kg bags” in the form of icebergs into the Weddell Sea. This was no isolated event, considering that the Wilkins Ice Shelf, a shelf seven times the size of Manhattan, started its collapse in February, 2008.

Scientists are concerned that the continued melting in the Arctic will eventually “dump enough freshwater into the North Atlantic to interfere with sea currents. Some freshwater would come from the ice-melt itself, but the main contributor would be increased rain and snow in the region. Retreating ice cover exposes more of the ocean surface, allowing more moisture to evaporate into the atmosphere and leading to more precipitation.” This, by consequence,

would make the surface layers more buoyant. That’s a problem because the surface water needs to sink to drive a primary ocean circulation pattern known as the “Great Ocean Conveyor.” Sunken water flows south along the ocean floor toward the equator, while warm surface waters from tropical latitudes flow north to replace the water that sank, thus keeping the Conveyor slowly chugging along. An increase in freshwater could prevent this sinking of North Atlantic surface waters, slowing or stopping this circulation.

This would certainly impair—or even impede—all life in the oceans, and not just that of migratory marine species.

Threat Number 3: Increase in Ocean Temperatures and Pollution

The basic diet of sea turtles consists of jellyfish, seaweed, seagrass, crabs, shrimp, snails, algae, and mollusks. All these creatures constitute parts of the marine food chain and are affected by rising ocean temperatures. The contribution that sea turtles make to this complex ecosystem or food chain is enormous. Green turtles, for instance, are the most abundant mega-herbivore in the ocean, consuming “countless tons of seagrasses and algae;” the hawksbill turtle, on the other hand, is “an abundant spongivore on coral reefs,” which keeps reefs healthy; while the leatherbacks consume mainly gelatinous zooplankton and “Olive Ridleys, Kemp’s Ridleys, flatbacks, and loggerheads consume vast amounts of invertebrates, from crustaceans to conch shells”.

In a study done by Milani Chaloupka, a vice chair of the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group, the importance of sea turtles was underlined as “major consumers of sea life, and their lifestyles and waste products make them ecosystem engineers through their effects on coral reefs, seagrass pastures, sea-bottom habitats, and possibly oceanographic forces.” Furthermore, “their reproductive routines make sea turtles a dynamic link between land and sea, resulting in the transfer of vast amounts of energy and matter from the oceans to the nesting beaches that affect the ecology of terrestrial consumers from raccoons to soil microbes”.

Changes in oceanic temperatures can alter the marine ecosystem in various ways. A team of scientists led by Dr. Jef Huisman, of the University of Amsterdam, “calculated that global warming, which is causing the temperature of the sea surface to rise, will also interfere with the vital upward movement of nutrients from the deep sea”. These nutrients include nitrogen, phosphorous and iron, all of which are essential for phytoplankton. If plankton disappears, the entire food chain could collapse. Coral reefs, now listed in the IUCN Red List, are also at risk as a result from rising ocean temperatures. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, coral reefs are “home to more than 25 percent of all marine life, are among the oldest and most fragile ecosystems in the world” and play an important role in sustaining many of the remaining sea turtle populations.

Figures 6-8: Green Sea Turtles

According to a study published by National Geographic entitled “Global Warming Has Devastating Effect on Coral Reefs, Study Shows”, “eight years after warming seas caused the worst coral die-off on record, coral reefs in the Indian Ocean are still unable to recover,” according to marine biologists. In some areas, “reefs have been reduced to rubble, a collapse that has deprived fish of food and shelter.” As a result, the study announces, fish diversity has tumbled by half in some world regions. Dr. Nancy Knowlton, a marine biology professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, points out that “By and large, reefs have collapsed catastrophically just in the three decades that I’ve been studying them”. Sadly, the die-offs of so many of these delicate ecosystems will continue to be more and more prevalent. As Dr. Knowlton—member of National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration—notes: “corals live precariously close to their thermal limits,” and any temperature increase entails the risk of bleaching. Reefs present an important source of food and shelter for sea turtles, and their disappearance would have serious impacts on their numbers, considering for instance that the best coral reefs in the Arabian Gulf contain the greatest sea turtle populations, including the hawksbill turtle, green turtle, loggerhead, olive Ridley and leatherback.

Threat Number 4: Increased Sand Temperatures

This is perhaps the least obvious threat to the survival of sea turtles, but it’s nonetheless already taking its toll among the species. Sea turtles are among the many reptiles on the planet that have “temperature-dependent sex determination.” This means that it’s the incubating temperature what determines the sex of the hatchlings, instead of chromosomes or genetics. Within certain thermal parameters, the gender ratio remained balanced (50 male: 50 female) in the past. However, increases in temperature will continue to yield increasingly more female hatchlings. In an already low and continuously ebbing population of sea turtles, what impacts can warmer nesting temperatures have?

Taking the loggerhead sea turtle as an example, research has shown that as a temperature-dependent sex determined (TSD) reptile, the sex of the hatchlings will depend on the incubating temperature during the middle third period of incubation. The temperature at which the eggs will yield a balanced sex ratio, 50:50 male to female, varies depending on the nesting region, but if there are increases, the number of females will be higher than the number of males. “Generally, the pivotal temperature is between 28 and 30 ºC. Temperatures of 24 to 26 ºC tend to produce all males and temperatures of 32 to 34 ºC tend to produce all females”.

A new study on the loggerhead turtles concluded that male loggerheads will entirely disappear from the beaches of Florida if warming trends continue and the temperature rises by 2°C. As a consequence, female turtles in Florida would need to rely on male turtles migrating from North Carolina. Since in Florida 90% of all hatchlings are females while in North Carolina 58% of offspring are females, researchers fear that the male sea turtles will find it extremely hard to meet the ever-increasing breeding demands for so many female turtles. Dr. Brendan Godley, from the University of Exeter (United Kingdom), and his team analyzed data from over a period of 26 years to find out if fluctuations in temperatures have had an impact on sex ratios of sea turtles in North Carolina. “When they put the data into computer models and simulated a rise in temperature–as predicted through global warming–the results were striking”, since a predicted 2 degrees increase would entirely wipe out male offspring in Florida colonies.

This plight is not unique in the United States. Worldwide, the sex ratios of sea turtles’ offspring are of concern. Scientists Stephanie Kamel and Nicholas Mrosovsky, of the University of Toronto, recently studied hawksbill sea turtles in the Caribbean where coastal forests continue to disappear to accommodate the ever-growing tourist inflow. As a result, the beaches are warmer and some nesting sites have stopped yielding male hatchlings altogether. In a study of four different sea turtle nesting areas in Antigua (East Caribbean), the data demonstrated that only the eggs laid in the forested parts produced any male hatchlings. In contrast, the nests in the open beaches, at the forests’ edge or areas of low vegetation (i. e., with less shade and warmer sands) produced only female offspring. As deforestation continues to accommodate more tourists, their entertainment and consumption, there will not be any cool nesting sites remaining, which means no more male hatchlings. The same study concludes that:

Climate change compounds the threat of localized habitat destruction for these sensitive reptiles. Global warming predictions range from a 1° to 6° Celsius mean temperature increase over the next century, and studies have shown that as little as a 1° increase in mean incubation temperature can dramatically reduce the ratio of male turtle hatchlings to female. A 4° increase effectively eliminates male turtles from a clutch.

Can Sea Turtles Adapt?

Marine biologists have noted that some turtles have tried to compensate for rising global temperatures by nesting earlier and in cooler areas. Dr. John Tucker, University of Illinois, and Dr. Frederick Janzen, Iowa State University, have been documenting that some individual sea turtles are nesting between 10 and 21 days earlier than usual. Although this adaptation measure may seem like a glimpse of hope, this “behavioral change is limited to individual turtles, and there is no evidence that whole species, or even whole populations, will adapt in this way.” According to Dr. Janzen, “air temperature [which is influenced by global warming] is only one of many indicators that signal the start of nesting season. Other factors less influenced by global warming, such as ground temperature and day length, ultimately influence how early turtles will start to nest”. The sea turtles studied “have a limited amount of behavioral plasticity, and then,” Dr. Janzen explains, “they have to evolve”. Unfortunately, anthropogenic climate change and the destruction of a wide variety of ecosystems would demand that such ancient species (110 million years old) evolve within years.

WWF Climate Change Research Scientist, Michael Case, admonishes that “as we continue to pollute our atmosphere with emissions from power plants, sea level rise increases and will drastically reduce sea turtle nesting sites.” Climate change, Dr. Case concludes, “could well be the long term threat that determines whether some species of sea turtles survive or go extinct”.

Figure 9: Hawksbill Turtle

A study by OCEANA enumerates the many implications of climate change on the sea turtles’ dwindling populations, as well as what would result from the total loss of the species. The research illustrates that the continued dwindling of their populations will have deep effects upon many marine creatures. In the words of the authors of the study:

sea turtles feed on jellyfish in the Chesapeake Bay; jellyfish in turn feed on fish larvae. Fewer sea turtles could result in an increase in the jellyfish population, causing “blooms” that would harm the fish populations of the bay. Green sea turtles grazing on sea grass actually increase the productivity and nutrient content of the beds, thus benefiting other species. By eating sponges, hawksbills keep the balance of sponges and corals on reefs and thus play an important role in coral reef ecosystems. Sea turtles also play an important role in nutrient transport, bringing substantial quantities of nutrients from feeding areas to nutrient-poor coastal habitats near nesting beaches.

The survival of 110 million years of evolution hangs from a thread, and depends on the survival of all the little hatchlings that try to make their way from their nests to the ocean against so many challenges yet to come—pollution, climate change, rampant unsustainable fishing, poaching, warmer nesting temperatures, and loss of nesting beaches.

Hatchling by hatchling; species by species… It’s not merely scientific names being lost, but rather the very fabric of life on the planet being speedily annihilated. Current trends and rates of eradication of species were recently analyzed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which is the most comprehensive audit to date of the health of our planet. The Assessment delivers pretty bad news, and warns that we are experiencing a loss of species not just in apocalyptical proportions, but that in fact “Organisms are disappearing at something like 100 to 1,000 times the ‘background levels’ seen in the fossil record.”

In addition, Dr. Georgina Mace, science director at the Institute of Zoology (London, UK), highlights that “Changes in biodiversity were more rapid in the last 50 years than at any time in human history, […] and when you look to the future, to various projections and scenarios, we expect those changes to continue and in some circumstances to accelerate.” It seems as though all of those hatchlings that already face one in a thousand chances of surviving to adulthood, will face even worse odds, since “future models […] tell us that as we move into the next 100 years, we’ll be seeing extinction rates that are a thousand to 10,000 times those in the fossil record”.

So much for the name of the species largely responsible: “homo sapiens.” Meaning the wise human? A more appropriate name would be “homo perniciosus pestis pestis:” the human who destroys and brings pestilence. Unfortunately, the chances of survival for all marine species and ecosystems at this point appear to be just as slim as for each little hatchling emerging from its nest.

 

Additional Resources:

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Website
  
• The State of the Wold's Sea Turtles
• Defenders of Wildlife
• The IUCN 2007 Red List of Endangered Species (searchable database)
• The Caribbean Conservation Corporation, the oldest organization dedicated specifically to the study and protection of sea turtles
• The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
  
• The Biology of Sea Turtles, volumes I and II, by Peter L. Lutz, John A. Musick and Jeanette Wynecken. A classic textbook and essential literature on sea turtles.
• World Wildlife Fund (excellent resources and extensive, ongoing research on sea turtles)
• The Ocean Foundation
• The Ocean Conservancy
• The Ocean Alliance (Did you know…? Ocean Alliance President, Dr. Roger Payne, was the zoologist who first recorded the singing of humpback whales along with his wife, Katy, in 1967. This started the “Save the Whales” movement, which eventually grew to become the modern environmental movement.)