Why Am I Endangered?
What Threatens Me?
We are threatened in many ways. A way to look at all the different threats of any native species is using the acronym HIPPCO. HIPPCO stands for Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Population growth, Pollution, Climate change, and Overexploitation. Unfortunately, many of these issues plague our species, read below to learn more about some of our main threats.
Climate Change
We are highly threatened by many different aspects but are the most impacted by human behavior. Humans have caused oil spills which can kill off or seriously injure us, as well as our homes. According to endangeredanimals.org, our species had the highest death toll of all turtles after the BP oil spill. 809 of my friends were negatively impacted, and 609 of those were killed.
Another impact humans have on us is their litter, which often ends up in the ocean and even inside of some of us. All this litter can end up in big clumps in the ocean like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) (Science Friday, 2021). This is harmful for a variety of reasons, but one of the more direct impacts it has on us is that the trash can look like food, and so we can eat it or get stuck inside of it. One of our prey is jellyfish. Plastic bags can look like jellyfish when floating around in the ocean, and so we accidentally eat them causing many of us to die.
People also build houses and buildings near or on our beaches where we usually nest, which threatens or completely kills our habitat and the ecosystem within it. The building as well as other climate factors have caused many of the beaches we nest on to become eroded, which can cause us to not be able to nest there anymore, which sadly threatens us and our ability to produce offspring (NOAA, 2021).
Sometimes, people also hunt our eggs, which also has an impact on our population. They do this to sell our babies to eat, or to collect.
Fishing nets are also a big issue for me and my friends. We get caught in the nets and can end up dying because of them. See the What Can Be Done page for more information on laws protecting us.
Another issue is invasive species. Invasive predators come into our environment, especially when we nest on the beach, and they eat our eggs and babies.
Biological Resource Use:
Industries Affecting The Population/Ecosystem
Oil and Gas drilling (IUCN)
According to the IUCN, the Fossil Fuel industry is one of the largest threats to our population next to the commercial fishing industry. As of April 2019, there are approximately 1,862 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. (BSEE, 2019) This large oil presence impacts us because they cause obstructions in our migratory path as well as leach toxins into our homes in the event of a spill. An example of the effects of an oil spill on our population is the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Researchers found that as many as 20 percent of our nesting females were killed during the spill. (Watkins, 2016) The immense impact of this industry on us is yet another reason that you must reduce the amount of oil mining in the US and the world if you hope to sustain our planet.
(NOAA, n.d.)
(Meiners, 2020)
Biological Resource Use
The commercial fishing industry is another major threat to our population according to the IUCN. This is due to the amount of us that are either captured through large trawlers or impacted by lost or discarded nets. A method that has been implemented to reduce the amount of us and other turtles captured by these nets is called turtle exclusion devices (TEDs). Though these are federally required, some sectors such as the shrimping industry complain that they are too expensive. “Since 1989, all U.S. fishing trawlers working in areas populated by sea turtles are required by federal law to use turtle exclusion devices (TEDs) in their fishing nets. The shrimping industry claims that TEDs made shrimping unprofitable because of high implementation costs and a reduction in shrimp catch by 30- 50%. However, a scientific study found actual shrimp catch reduction is 5-13%, and the 5th circuit court determined implementation of TEDs incurs an average annual cost of $5.9 million, significantly less than what the shrimping industry claims.” (Che-Castaldo et al., n.d.) In reality, these devices only cost about $330-550, which cost much less than a recovery plan for our specie’s population. By implementing these devices they are helping to preserve the population of every sea turtle, not just ours.
Struggles Of Recovering
Unfortunately, we have a lot of specific requirements that make recovering more difficult. Some examples of those requirements are that we have very specific habitat requirements, and only really nest at two beaches, so it’s harder for us to move to other areas if those places become wrecked. Unfortunately, captive breeding programs also aren’t super helpful in greatly changing our population numbers (read more about that HERE)