What now?
SOLUTIONS: Though in some areas there is little chance of completely reviving the gender ratio of sea turtles, there are several tactics I have explored that can be done to at least move populations forward.
1. Planting of trees on popular nesting beaches
- This will promote shade and cover for nests, making the atmosphere somewhat cooler and helping to cool the sand as well. A potential con of this would be altering the beaches with human influence, the species that do live there may not be adapted to more trees and it could potentially impact them. Another potential con is the scale this would have to be done on. There are so many nesting beaches around the world this solution looks nearly impossible. However, with cooler temperatures of sand, the turtles would produce more males once again.
2. Shading tents
- Similar to the idea of planting trees, in some communities, researchers have been implementing tents above a nest after the turtle lays her eggs. Again, these tents provide shade to help cool the environment as well as the sand, promoting a better chance for both male and female gender production.
3. Hatcheries with Humans
- Countries with a decent amount of funds have proven incubating eggs at controlled temperatures in a human lab has created the desired ratio of male to female. A con regarding this solution is that it will be extremely difficult to collect all the eggs on every beach to perform this altered incubation.
4. Drainage pipes underneath the sand
- Humans could implement cool water drainage pipes beneath the sand to release small, cool, amounts of water into the sand at set times. The pipes would be small in order to make sure species are not harmed. The pipes could even be laid out like a sprinkler system. By releasing the cool water into the sand, the incubation temperatures could be kept at a relatively neutral temperature to ensure a more even gender ratio produced from the clutch.
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5. Artificial Rain
6. Increase public awareness to make the public more willing to donate and help to find solutions.
Though this subject is very recent and had not been researched much until this past year, efforts to save the turtle populations are high. Research is still being done, and more plausible solutions are still being discovered. Keep checking back to observe new solutions added within the coming months.