Turtle Talk

1. What would you say is the main cause of turtle populations becoming more and more dominated by females?

 

The sex of Turtles is determined by the temperature of the nest when the eggs are incubating. If nests are somewhere around 29.5 degrees Celsius you get around 50-50 male to females. As the temperature gets hotter, the portion of females gets higher - coller incubation means more males. As global temperatures increase, beaches are getting hotter so more of the hatchlings come out as females.

 

 2. In your opinion how much of a role does climate change play into the endangerment of sea turtles? 

I believe it is by far the greatest threat to turtles at this time. One reason being feminisation as described above, but also because extreme weather events can destroy important nesting beaches and foraging grounds. This however does not mean that we don't need to focus on other big causes of turtle deaths such as commercial fisheries, coastal development, plastics etc as the turtle populations need to be as strong as possible to be able to cope with the changing climate

 

 3. What are the ideal breeding grounds for sea turtles? 

 

The ideal 'breeding' ground varies between species because they eat different things but the best nesting beaches are ones that are easily accessible from the water, have a gentle slope, suitable temperatures and don't get inundated by water. 

 

 4. How fast would you say this problem is leading to extinction? (at what rates) 

 

Very difficult to say really because it varies so much between different species and different breeding populations within each species. For example, we have data on hawksbills in the western Pacific and they appear to be declining by about 3-4% per year, and if they continue at that rate, that population would be gone in less than 20 years.

 

5. Can this society dominated by females be prevented and brought back to normal conditions? If so, how?

 

This is the question that many researchers are trying to answer now. Part of the solution may be to give extra attention to protecting beaches with lighter coloured sand (these are cooler) so that sites producing males are in good condition. There are people looking at whether shading nesting sites is an option but this is unlikely to be possible on the scale required. 

​

6. Is anything being done as we speak in attempt to solve this problem?

 

I don't know of any direct actions being taken, as the research results on this issue for the northern Great Barrier Reef turtles were only published this year.  I think there is a lot of discussion going on among government agencies and other researchers to try to find solutions