Human Impacts on Sea Turtle Survival

Lutcavage, Molly; Plotkin, Pamela; Witherington, Blair; Lutz, Peter

As detailed in the introductory chapter by Pritchard, sea turtles have a long and ancient history. Sea turtles arose in the early Mesozoic, and for the next 100 million years, during the rise and reign of the dinosaurs, they shared the oceans with a rich diversity of other air-breathing marine reptiles. By the end of the Cretaceous era, the sea-going ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs were extinct, but sea turtles tenaciously survived and indeed flourished up until very recent times. But today their numbers are drastically reduced to the point that all seven remaining sea turtle species are considered either threatened or endangered on a worldwide basis. Undoubtedly, human interference is the cause of this collapse. The challenges that sea turtles now face from human activities impact every stage of their life cycle, from loss of nesting beach and foraging habitats to mortalities on the high seas through intense pelagic fishing practices. They are also harmed by the increasing loads of non biodegradable waste and pollutants that the oceans and coastal zones now receive. Clearly, a full consideration of all human activities that adversely impact sea turtles and required conservation measures would be beyond the scope of a single chapter. However, a review of the more compelling effects will give an indication of the extent of the challenges sea turtles face and the efforts required to protect them. A word of caution: by its very nature much of the data on this subject is only found in the "grey literature" of government and conservation organization reports and such like, and is therefore scientifically unreviewed. This is sometimes the case in conservation biology, where threats to survival are first recognized and conservation remedies proposed by biologists familiar with the status of local populations.

Human Impacts on Sea Turtle Survival

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