Helicopter Pilot Blows Whistle On Tuna Industry (by GreenpeaceVideo)
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Great Barrier Reef: Rising turtle deaths prompt warnings of wildlife crisis
Unusually large numbers of dead and dying sea turtles are washing up on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef coast, prompting environmental groups to warn of a wildlife crisis in the region. Researchers and local residents have reported that several Queensland beaches have been strewn with the carcasses of the animals, with wildlife centres in the northern city of Townsville inundated with ailing turtles. According to the Queensland state government, 649 turtle deaths were reported in the first seven months of 2011, up 200 on the same period last year. Dugongs are also suffering badly, with 96 of the aquatic mammals reported dead in the first seven months of the year, compared with 79 in the whole of 2010. Sick and starving turtles have been observed approaching the shallows, where they invariably die. Researchers believe that a severe loss of sea grass, the turtles’ staple food source, is to blame for the escalating death toll.
The fact that leatherback turtles swim thousands of miles is driven home beautifully in this new map of their sophisticated, ocean-spanning movements. Between 2000 and 2007, biologists attached GPS transmitters to 126 leatherbacks nesting in Indonesia, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. These individuals represent one of three remaining subpopulations of the endangered turtle, which can reach lengths of 6 feet and weigh more than 2,000 pounds. The map resulting resulting from the transmissions, published in the July Ecosphere, shows creatures that don’t just drift in instinctive obedience to migratory impulse. The leatherbacks navigated in time with season and temperature and current, visiting eddies and boundaries and blooms. They demonstrated the sophistication and pickiness of a savvy grocery-store shopper, except their store covers a tenth of Earth’s surface. For scientists, the findings will inform conservation programs and emphasize the need for international-level cooperation. For everyone else, they reinforce just how amazing these creatures are.Sea Turtle GPS Shows Ocean-Spanning Leatherback Buffet
An excerpt from an email I received from a colleague
50.3% of all modern day tortoises and freshwater turtles and tortoises are either critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable or recently exticnct! There are 328 species left in the world.
Freshwater turtles and tortoises are more endangered than birds, mammals, cartilaginous fishes or amphibians. The IUCN’s 2010 estimate for the percentage of threatened species (Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable), including all the data deficient species stands at:
Tortoises and freshwater turtles: 54% Amphibians: 41% Cartilaginous fishes: 33% Mammals: 25% Birds: 13% In Asia the situation is FAR worse! The IUCN SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group met in Singapore this February to reassess the status of Asia’s 72 species for the IUCN Red List. According to their draft Red List which is currently being prepared, 46% are Critically Endangered, 29% are Endangered, 12.5% are Vulnerable and most of the other 12.5% are data deficient!! So thats 87.5% threatened, NOT including the data deficient ones.
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