EXTENSION REPORT

Sea Turtles – True Citizens of the World

If you have ever been walking down the beach in the morning and found a track that looks like a riding lawn mower came up from the water to the dunes and back, you have seen the path of a female sea turtle. There is a good chance here on the Alabama coast that you could see turtle tracks, or even the turtle itself. There are five different kinds of sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. The one you are most likely to see is the loggerhead (Caretta caretta). It is named for its huge head that looks like a log sticking out of the shell. The shell itself is thick and wide near the front and narrow near the rear. It is usually tan or brown with some yellow. A loggerhead can grow to 38 inches long and weigh 380 pounds. It eats crabs, shrimp, jellyfish, and plants. The meat of the loggerhead tastes terrible, so it was never in danger of being eaten into extinction.

The second most common sea turtle in our waters is the green (Chelonia mydas). It was named for the green color of its body fat. Its meat is very tasty and is still used in other countries in turtle steaks and turtle soup. Greens have a small, delicate head. The shell is olive brown with darker streaks or spots. A green can be 40 inches long and weigh 330 pounds. It eats only plants.

The hawksbill (Eretmochalys imbricata) is named for its beak-like nose. Its beautiful shell is marked with amber, red, yellow, white, black, and green. This is the “tortoise shell” used to make jewelry and utensils. An adult hawksbill weighs about 100 pounds and is 30 to 36 inches long. It feeds on fish, shellfish, and sponges.

The Kemp’s ridley (Lepidochelys kempi) is the most endangered of our sea turtles. It is also the smallest, weighing only 85 to 100 pounds and reaching a length of 22 to 30 inches. The outline of its shell is nearly round and can be gray, brown, black, or green. It feeds along the Gulf coast on fish, jellyfish, mollusks, and swimming crabs.

The leatherback sea turtle (Dermocheyls coriacea) has leathery skin instead of scales. Five to seven ridges run down the length of its shell. The shell is usually black with white spots. The leatherback is more like marine mammals than like other sea turtles. It has a growth rate similar to marine mammals. It starts out as a four-inch hatchling and can grow to weigh in at 1,800 pounds. It is the largest of all turtles and the fastest growing reptile in the world. Like marine mammals, the leatherback has subcutaneous tissue to keep it warm. It swims into frigid water eating mostly jellyfish. In the Gulf of Mexico, ninety percent of the leatherback’s diet could be made up of jellyfish, an animal that is made up mostly of water. Because of the leatherback’s supped-up metabolic rate, it has to eat its body weight in jellyfish every day. The leatherback is also the deepest diving reptile. It spends 95 percent of its time submerged. Leatherbacks have been tracked diving to depths of over 1,000 meters in the Atlantic Ocean.

Each year between May and August, female sea turtles crawl out of the Gulf at night to lay their eggs in the sand of our beaches. The female will dig a deep hole with her flippers, lay 100 to 120 round, leathery eggs, cover them back up, and crawl back to the water. She may return at 14-day intervals to lay several nests along that stretch of beach. The eggs incubate in the warm sand for 60 to 65 days. Then they hatch out at night, crawl to the Gulf, and swim to a place that is relatively safe from predators. Sea turtles have a lot of problems naturally. Their nesting season coincides with hurricane season. In 2005, because of untimely hurricanes and tropical storms, no eggs hatched at all on the Alabama coast. Of course, sea turtles and hurricanes have existed together for many years, and the turtles always seem to bounce back. They have many natural predators. Here along Alabama’s coast, raccoons, skunks, and red foxes dig into the nests and eat the eggs and young hatchlings. In Florida, feral cats are the worst predator on the nests. In Mexico, it is coyotes and vultures. In Sri Lanka on the Indian Ocean, it is the six-foot-long monitor lizard.

It is important to protect sea turtles when they are in the open sea and when they are in their shallow, coastal feeding grounds, but it is critical that we protect their nesting beaches. This is where you find the greatest concentration of females (and males not far offshore), and where all sea turtles start out. Hawaiian Green Turtles can be found throughout the Hawaiian Archipelago, but they only nest in the French Frigate Shoals. Kemps Ridley Turtles range throughout the Gulf, but must come back to Mexico, to a tiny stretch of beach called Rancho Nuevo, to nest. The largest nesting beach for leatherbacks in the U.S. territories is a stretch in eastern Puerto Rico. Over 300 female leatherbacks come there to nest each year. This beach is currently threatened by development. The most important loggerhead nesting beach in the Western Hemisphere and the most important green turtle nesting beach in the United States are in the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge on Florida’s Atlantic coast. Tens of thousands of sea turtles nest along a 20-mile stretch of beach that includes the Carr Refuge.

The most remarkable thing about sea turtles for me is their migration routes. A turtle that hatches on the beach of the Gulf State Park can travel out of the Gulf of Mexico, use the Gulf Stream to move up the Atlantic coast of the United States into the Sargasso Sea, move across the Atlantic to Europe and the Azores, into the feeding grounds of the Mediterranean Sea, and down the west coast of Africa. It can cross the Atlantic using the same currents that bring hurricanes west to the Caribbean and the Florida coast. It can move back into the Gulf of Mexico and return to nest on the very beach where it hatched. This trip can take ten or fifteen years. Sea turtles have only modest vision and can only lift their heads a few inches out of the water. Researchers have shown that sea turtle navigate by detecting both the angle and the intensity of the earth’s magnetic field. Using these two characteristics, a sea turtle can determine its latitude and longitude, enabling it to swim anywhere in the world.

Researchers attach satellite transmitters to the carapaces (top shells of sea turtles). The transmitter is often glued directly to the carapace, behind the head, where the unit’s small flexible antennae can break the surface to transmit when the turtle comes up to breathe. Using computer mapping, the researchers can track where the turtles migrate, what routes they travel, and how fast they swim. Over the past twenty years, scientists have been able to record every important nesting beach, feeding ground, and migration route for each of the sea turtle species.

In early April, I had the opportunity to participate in the 26th annual International Sea Turtle Symposium held on the Island of Crete in Greece. This was my third time to attend this symposium. It is such a treat to meet people from all over the world who are working to protect one particular kind of animal.

The symposium brings together people who are working at the grassroots level to protect nesting beaches from over development or harsh lighting, to educate fishermen about the need to protect turtles, to reduce marine debris, to organize sea turtle nest adoption programs.

Speakers from many different countries told their stories. I heard presentations from Cameroon on the west coast of Africa, from Baja California Sur on the Pacific coast of Mexico, from the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, and from the Greek Islands of the Mediterranean Sea. Each of them told how they are making strides to protect a certain population of sea turtles that calls their shore or waters home for part of its life. Some are developing management plans. Some are restoring habitats. Some are raising public awareness. Some are rehabilitating sick and injured turtles.

This was the first time the symposium was held in the Mediterranean. It was sponsored by ARCHELON, the Sea Turtle Protection Society of Greece, and by MEDASSET, the Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles. Next year’s Sea Turtle Symposium will be held in the relatively close town of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The 2008 symposium will be in Baja, Mexico. The International Sea Turtle Society hosts a website, www.seaturtle.org. The website is full of information about the world’s sea turtles, lists of members, tracking information on over 1000 tagged turtles at any given time, sea turtle merchandise, a library of resources, and links to other sea turtle conservation organizations.

I really enjoyed my time in Greece. The country is beautiful. The food is delicious. The people are the most friendly I have met in all of my travels. My connection to Greece is even stronger knowing that one of our little loggerhead hatchlings from Alabama might be living as an adult, feeding off the island of Zakynthos in the very blue waters of Greece.

Best Building Practices: Codes and Beyond

A workshop will be held to learn about the benefits of building to codes and look at best building practices with Steve Easley from the Discovery channel show “Your New House”. Bob Wendt from Oak Ridge Laboratory will talk about “Rebuilding a Flood Damaged Home”. Michael Dewein from BCAP will talk about the application of the International Residential Code. One workshop will be held on Wednesday, May 17 from 9:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m. at the Hampton Inn, 29451 U.S. Highway 98 in Daphne. Another workshop will be on Thursday, May 18 at the Home Builders Association of Metro Mobile on 1613 University Boulevard South in Mobile from 9:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Space is limited so register by calling the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Mobile at 661-6523.

The workshop is designed to provide information on new technologies and building energy codes that can help in making new construction more energy-efficient and sustainable against storm damage. New building materials and technologies for more sustainable homes, rebuilding flood damaged homes and the benefits and impacts of code adoption in the Gulf Coast area will be covered. Attendees will receive a copy of IRC 2003, IRC 2006, or other ICC book of their choice.

The meeting is sponsored by the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, the Alabama Cooperative Extension System and Auburn University.

Email address: smahler@aces.edu
Phone: 937-7176 or 943-5611, 928-0860, ext. 2222

Issued in furtherance of Cooperative Extension work in agriculture and home economics, Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, and other related acts, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Alabama Cooperative Extension System (Alabama A&M University and Auburn University) offers educational programs, materials, and equal opportunity employment to all people without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, veteran status, or disability.