WHY SAVE?
Evironmental Value
Why is the Hawksbill Sea Turtle critically endangered?
Why is The Hawksbill Sea Turtle critically endangered? This turtle possesses an exquisite shell making the turtle have a high aesthetics value. The products of this shell are non-essential: hair clips, combs, jewelry, leather, oil, perfume, and cosmetics. (Hawksbill Turtle, 2015). The hunting of these turtles for their shells is one of the ways in which they are threatened. Additionally all sea turtles, have experienced the loss of nesting and foraging habitat, accidental capture in fisheries, and marine pollution. (Hawksbill Sea Turtle, 2011)
This animal will soon be extinct if humans continue to negatively affect the Hawksbills habitat. The beaches used for nesting sites as well as the coral reefs that are their niche, are becoming scarce. Rising global temperatures affect the quality of the coral reef. Warming ocean temperatures result in less coral growth limiting the turtle’s habitat.
If there are fewer turtles, there will be an abundance of jellyfish because the jellyfish constitute a portion of the turtle’s diet.The food chain will be disrupte resulting in the ocean waters containing large numbers of jellyfish. Fewer tourists will come to the small islands and thereby limit economic growth and development for the islands.
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Ghandi
Another food source for the Hawksbills are sponges and other invertebrates therefore influencing diversity through selective feeding, reducing the cover of certain species of sponges and cnidarians and lowering those species’ ability to outcompete other reef organisms (Troëng, S. 2005). If the Hawksbills were to be extinct, sponges would dominate the coral reefs leading to very little biodiversity of other coral species. Hawksbills are the main consumers of sponges, as other species are not able to digest their glasslike crystal makeup. Not only would the overgrowth of sponges make many other species leave due to lack of food, humans would not want to go snorkeling if there is little wildlife and hardly any coral diversity. If the turtles die off, there goes our beloved coral reefs leaving some of our favorite memories. The Hawksbill impacts the ocean’s entire ecosystem, as much as it affects humans.
What makes the Hawksbill Special?
The Hawksbill Sea Turtle’s shell is streaked in a tie-dyed like pattern with vivid colors of amber, yellow, and brown. They are relatively small in comparison with other sea turtles,
so more have to be killed in order to get more shell. Adult Hawksbills
are about 2.5 to 3 feet in carapace length and 101- 150 pounds in weight
(Hawksbill Sea Turtle 2011). They have a narrow head and tapering beak,
allowing the turtles to eat sponges and pick in between the coral. This is
also how the hawksbills get their name. They also have an immunity to
the toxins that the sponges contain. This provides the turtles with less
competition for this food source.
Where are the baby Hawksbills?
One would think that if the female hawksbill turtles have large broods at 140, and short gestation periods of only 60 days this would allow for adequate biotic potential. However the female needs to find a nesting place free of human impact. If so she can typically lay up to 100 to 140 eggs in a single clutch. She can lay approximately five clutches in one breeding season and then wait a few years before nesting again. But again, the difficulty is in finding a suitable nesting site and this can be overwhelming. As development increases along our beaches and artificial lighting becomes the norm, females become increasingly stressed and may not lay eggs at all, if they can not find a beach free of these irritating obstacles.
Economic Value
What Are The Costs?
Sea Turtles have been apart of ecotourism for decades. For instance, turtle watching has been documented in Mon Repos, Queensland, Australia, since the late 1800s, (Pilcher, Dr. Nicholas, 2002). For years turtles have contributed to the economy and overall joy of thousands of tourist worldwide. These turtles play a key role in the coral reef ecosystem - a huge ecotourism magnet around the world. Without these turtles playing their part, coral reefs along with many other organisms could die, costing local beach communities, large industries, and places that could receive more than half their revenue from this type of income a fortune. This is not to say we should put income over an entire species, but by killing off the Hawksbill, we would be enabling the failure of billion dollar industries.
How Will This Affect Us?
One negative effect that will show after hawksbills disappear from our oceans is a surplus of jellyfish. As an vital ingredient to any hawksbill turtle’s diet, jellyfish populations in the oceans would grow exponentially due to the lack of hawksbills. Hawksbills are one of the main predators of jellyfish and highly control their populations. This is another destructing factor to our oceans that will occur if we don’t protect hawksbills. This will also contribute to the destruction of many ocean and coastline based industries.
Jellyfish Gone Nuclear!?
Overpopulation of jellyfish has been causing problems in other industries as well. In 2006, jellyfish clogged a nuclear reactor’s cooling water intake and caused the plant to produce at 60% reduced output. But this is not the first problem we’ve had. In 1982, jellyfish brought to the Black Sea likely by ballast water, wiped out a $350 million dollar fishing industry. Clearly the survival of hawksbills is vital to many ocean industries which create hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.
Fishing rakes in nearly 31 billion dollars per year in the United States alone. Without hawksbills maintaining the oceans, jellyfish populations will increase and and coral will overgrow making fishing much more difficult and less prosperous. We’ve already seen this begin to happen! In 2007, Mauve jellyfish wiped out 100,000 salmon on Northern Ireland’s only salmon farm. Two years later in 2009, a net full of Nomura’s jellyfish, which weigh in at nearly 440 pounds, capsized an entire 10-ton fishing boat off the coast of Japan. Our oceans are being taken over, and the only solution may be to save the hawksbills.
What About Protected Land?
Protected land and wildlife reserves are important in order to both environmentally preserve ecosystems and species and generate money into the economy. Land preserves receive nearly eight billion attendees each year. In the United States alone that’s two and a half billion per year. This figure monetarily is about six hundred billion dollars per year according to Dr. Robin Naidoo of World Wildlife Fund. With oceans, coastlines, and beaches making up a significant amount of that figure, without the access to oceans, we would lose a significant amount of that income. Losing access to the earth’s oceans would have an extreme effect on our economy.
Providing Food, Cycling Nutrients
Sea turtles also provide food for fish. While living, turtle shells cary barnacles and algae which many fish require this as a steady supply of food. With sea turtles gone, fish will move away from coastlines and shores finding other sources of food. Turtles also provide food as prey to larger predators. These predators also rely on turtles as a steady supply of nutrients. Without hawksbills, our oceans variety and biodiversity would be changed drastically.