Unintended Consequences?

Unintended Consequences?

The oceans’ fish and crustaceans are not ours to eat; moreover, they’re
needed for the survival of other marine animals who live and depend on a
healthy ocean – free of nets, trawlers and lines to catch fish.

It turns out they have a little magnetite crystal in their brain, as
homing pigeons do. They use this to sense the earth’s magnetic field --
apparently recognizing the unique magnetic path to their homes.

During a trip through North Carolina, on my way to visit friends on
Hilton Head Island, I read a stirring article about a marriage proposal on a
Hilton Head beach. It produced an “unintended consequence: The death of
about 60 federally protected loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings,” reported The
Charlotte Observer on September 25, 2009.

After the candle-lit proposal, the couple left the beach without
extinguishing candles they placed inside 150 open, sand-filled paper bags –
unaware of local laws that safeguard baby sea turtles by prohibiting the
placement of candles on the beach. Nor were they aware of beachfront light
restrictions in force from May through October.

Loggerhead sea turtles nest on the fourteen miles of Hilton Head beaches
each summer, and Coastal Discovery Museum staff patrols the beaches from May
through October to move nests from precarious locations to assure the safety
of the hatchlings.

Warnings are given. Fines of $1,092 can be imposed by law. Rules are
designed to discourage and prevent humans from stealing eggs.

Carlos explains: “Everywhere sea turtles nest, there are people eating
their eggs.”

Some people in the Latin American community consider turtle eggs an
aphrodisiac, Carlos adds; and some Native Islanders put turtle eggs on fancy
cakes.

Loggerhead turtles mate at sea by early June, and the nesting season
peaks in June and July. Each nest contains up to 120 eggs the size and shape
of ping-pong balls. Carlos Chacon estimates that 40 or more loggerheads
nested on Hilton Head beaches in 2009, with each of these female turtles
digging four to six nests, producing 178 sand-covered nests. Two were lost –
dug out of the sand from depths of two feet, and removed from the beach.

Destroyed turtle eggs on polluted beach

Moreover, though they have few natural predators, other than Tiger sharks
and Great White sharks, the mortality rate of hatched turtles is huge. Only
one out of a few hundred or thousand survives to adulthood. At 25 years of
age, the 300-pound survivors, with reddish-brown shells and brownish-yellow
skin, come ashore to nest. They can live another 60 years or more, laying
thousands of eggs in their lifetime. Yet loggerheads and all other species
of sea turtles are in danger of extinction.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, in Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras, is
fascinated with sea turtles. Jeffrey visits a Costa Rican beach, and wonders
what will happen to the two-inch-long hatchlings who emerge from a nest.
They wait until dark, then race to the sea, Jeffrey learns -- and most don’t
make it. Those who do will one day, in many years, come back to lay their
eggs on the very same beach.

“It sounded like magic,” Jeffrey writes. “How could they possibly return
to the same beach years later?

It turns out they have a little magnetite crystal in their brain, as
homing pigeons do. They use this to sense the earth’s magnetic field --
apparently recognizing the unique magnetic path to their homes.

Two months after loggerheads lay their eggs at night, turtles begin to
hatch, having to liberate themselves from their nests without parental help.
Hatchlings break open their shells using a temporary tooth. The hatchlings
dig out of the nest in a days-long group effort. They burst out of the nest
as a group at night, and head to the brightest light, the reflection of the
moon on water. Full moons benefit hatchlings, guiding them to the sea when
the moon’s strongest light shines over water. Then a long and perilous
underwater migration begins.

Literature distributed by the Coastal Discovery Museum to Hilton Head’s
hotels warns the tourist community to leave turtles and their nests
undisturbed, and to turn lights out so that hatchlings are not distracted.
Carlos explains that those 60 hatchlings who emerged from their nest on the
beach strewn with candles were disoriented by the artificial light. They
wandered inland, and were likely caught by natural predators such as Ghost
crabs and birds, or died of dehydration.

Once in the Atlantic Ocean, hatchlings born on Hilton Head’s beaches swim
60 miles to the Gulf Stream, with its currents filled with algae. Sargassum
weed provides ample food and helps conceal the turtles from predators. Baby
turtles must evade sharks, big fish and overhead birds. They might also die
from accidentally eating balloons, plastic bags and other garbage, or
getting trapped by trawlers, angling gear and gill nets.

After several years of floating around the Atlantic, young turtles who
have made their way to Europe and then along the west coast of Africa then
travel west across the Atlantic to make their way back to shore waters and
nest on the beach where they were born. This journey makes them, as Jeffrey
Masson says, “one of the most intriguing animals on our planet. It’s also
heroic: Only one in one thousand makes it back.”

With all the obstacles sea turtles face, it’s fitting we assist their
survival by not releasing balloons, using and discarding plastic bags and
other non-degradable litter that many sea turtles mistake for food, and by
respecting the needs and lives of these remarkable beings. The oceans’ fish
and crustaceans are not ours to eat; moreover, they’re needed for the
survival of other marine animals who live and depend on a healthy ocean –
free of nets, trawlers and lines to catch fish.

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