Leatherback Turtles out of a Habitat

For 100 million years the giant leatherback turtle (Dermochelyidae) swam in the warm and open oceans and sought to lay its eggs on a beach. It can get up to 3m long, can weigh up to 550 to 1,545 pounds (250-700 kg). The dinosaurs, came and went, but the largest living sea turtle continued on its long migration paths. One has been recorded swimming 20,000-kilometers (13,000-miles), from Indonesia to the U.S. looking for food. It loves eating jellyfish and other marine invertebrates. The the human species expanded and robbed it of all of its habitat.

The Beaches ashore - no place to nest

• Beachfront developments, infrastructure and the activities of people destroy their habitat
• SUVs on beaches damage the eggs and light pollution disorients the hatchling orientation.
• Poaching turtles, eggs, leather or oil or commercializing the 'out-door zoo' is devastating
• Nesting beaches are disappearing through human caused global warming-induced sea level rises and cyclone destruction.

At the Ocean of foreshore - a dangerous place to be

• It becomes bycatch/bykill through ineffective fishing activities (longline and gillnet, crab pots and trawls)( "An estimated 50 000 leatherback turtles were likely killed incidentally by the pelagic longline fishery in 2000".)
• It gets eaten as meat or used as an aphrodisiac to boost the human population
• It gets entangled or injured in the marine plastic debris form the fishing industry (lines, fishing hooks, nets, ropes, floats or traps)
• It eats the plastic litter (especially plastic bags, as they look like a jelly under water) and dies.
• Boats and ships strike it and cut up the soft 'shell' with sharp propellers and anchors contributed to the mortality of the turtle.
• Pollution and pathogenic bugs (sewage) dumped into the ocean impact on the health of the turtle
• Urban shark nets trap turtles
• Deliberate acts of cruelty by human beings
• Sea grass depletion and reduced water quality

No Place to Live

• In Baja California, Mexico," almost 3,000 sea turtles were found dead along a 27-mile stretch of coast during a five-year period from 2003 to 2007."
• "Leatherback sea turtles in the Pacific Ocean have declined by more than 90% over the past three decades as a result of drowning in industrial longline and gillnet fisheries targeting swordfish, sharks, and tunas."
• "Nesting in the Pacific (principally Japan and Australia) has declined by more than 90 percent over the past 25 years."

Swimways - lobbying for turtle real estate
To reduce the risks for the sea turtle in "areas of highest risk/interaction with fisheries" 'safe swimways' are to be created. "The IUCN is urging nations to protect the leatherback turtle from the world's industrial fisheries by identifying and creating marine protected areas along the Pacific leatherback's migratory routes. " It is to be seen what coastal habitat is put aside for the giant to reproduce and not hit the extinction vortex.
A giant jelly bloom in a dead sea is sure to be left behind without the jelly eater. "If current trends continue, Pacific leatherbacks are predicted to go extinct within the next few decades...Now it's time to turn the high-tech science into political will and conservation action for critically endangered leatherbacks."

Images:
1. Part of Chelonia, E.Haeckel via Wikipedia
2. Discomedusa, plate 8, E.Haeckel via Zeno

Links:
SWOT Report, The State of the World's Sea Turtles
As a Threatened Species, NSW
Conservation Status, gov.au
Tagging (attaching huge radio transmitters on their backs) to hopefully go beyond the gathering of hard 'census' data.
How NOT to eat turtle as a bycatch/bykill
Boat strike and entanglement, Queensland.gov.au.

Updates:
- In the name of conservation, 'hard data' has to be gathered on the species to be protected. Previously animals had to be cut up, stuffed and staged in dusty museums. The mode of the day is to tag them or 'observe them in captivity'. So it is that the 100 million years survivor, potentially making it to the size of a small car is serving science today. The leatherback is being kept for 2 years in captivity with a rubber harness to "generated new information crucial for the conservation of the critically endangered species." On the human-wildlife interface, it is only the 'wild-life' that serves as object to be managed. The anthropogenic values and impacts are not on the agenda. The human can continue to roam and erase the other species unhindered in their habitat. A 'blind spot' of 'science' ?
Howard, Peter, The Beast Within: An Exploration of Australian Constructions of Wildlife, Griffith University, 2007
Soft Rubber Harness Enables Researchers To Study Leatherback Turtles In Captivity For Years. University of British Columbia (2008, November 1) ScienceDaily.

Water and Desalination Factories by M. Barlow

Maude Barlow speaking about water and desalination plants in May 2008.

"Desalination plants will ring the world's oceans, many of them run by nuclear power; corporate nanotechnology will clean up sewage water and sell it to private utilities who will sell it back to us at a huge profit; the rich will drink only bottled water found in the few remote parts of the world left or sucked from the clouds by machines, while the poor die in increasing numbers. This is not science fiction. This is where the world is headed unless we change course."

Her book Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Fight for the Right to Water – (October 16, 2007) is a very readable and an informative insight on the expropriation of water. From water as a right to water only to be delivered in the commodity form for those who can pay.
There are also more videos of her talks
- Door Wide Open for Private Investment in the Water Industry, Department of Water and Energy, NSW gov. au, 080808

Pesticide leaking from shipping container at Moreton Bay, Brisbane

“A man is in a serious condition in a Brisbane hospital after a dangerous pesticide leak in a shipping container at Fisherman Islands at the Port of Brisbane.” The toxin “is believed to contain the chemical endosulfan”.

This highly toxic POP is banned in the EU and other countries, it is very persistent in the environment.” Endosulfan is a very toxic chemical for nearly all kind of organisms. Endosulfan has the potential to cause some endocrine disruption in both terrestrial and aquatic species. Endosulfan causes neurotoxicity and haematological effects and nephrotoxicity.”

The organochlorine pesticides came from “a leaking shipping container” on Fisherman Islands (map, pdf) which is surrounded by the Moreton Bay Marine Park.

The Bay Journal reports on the 'rapid crowding' of Moreton Bay in the Port of Brisbane.
Already there are a lot of threats to the Moreton Bay Marine Park .There are more horror tales of a 'A Primeval Tide of Toxins' in Moreton Bay.
Hope, the man makes it and the abundant marine wildlife and birds are not harmed.
Links:
- "The European Commission has proposed to amend the annexes to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants by adding endosulfan, a neurotoxic organochlorine insecticide."
- Moreton Bay Marine Park

Our Plastics in our Oceans - video

To visualise the previous post on ocean pollution, this video is worth watching.
The Algalita Marine Research Foundation depicts the problem of marine debris in our ecosystem.In the video entitled "Plastic Debris, Rivers to Sea" it is claimed that "80% of marine debris is land-based and 90% of floating marine debris is plastics."