In Uruguay, the threat of plastic pollution looms large in an area considered to be an important foraging and developmental habitat for sea turtles in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean. In recent years, NGO Karumbé has focused in on the issue of plastic pollution through strong community engagement programs designed to embed conservation ethics in the Uruguayan people.
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It is seven o’clock in the morning, and we are on an old wooden pier in a mangrove swamp on the south coast of Bahia, Brazil. After a night spent on a bus, our group boards two traditional fishing boats heading to Coroa Vermelha Island, a coral reef 13 kilometers offshore. Students of veterinary medicine and biology, journalists, an economist, an architect, a sales representative, and a retiree. Our shared goal is to capture juvenile green turtles, looking for signs of an all-too-common disease.
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When TAMAR started monitoring Itapuã beach in 1990, staff had to relocate nearly all nests to ensure that hatchlings would survive. Thanks to years of working with local stakeholders, coordinated social media campaigns, and public outreach. In the ensuing years, enhanced local participation in the protection efforts made it possible to increase in situ protection of nests from only 3 nests to 140 over the course of nearly 3 decades.
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Africa’s sea turtles were once among the least studied in the world, and mounting threats to their survival, such as fishing, poaching, coastal development, and pollution, still require further study and urgent attention. Today, a growing number of institutions and individuals are shedding new light on sea turtle science, and they are helping find solutions to the continent’s sea turtle and ocean conservation challenges.
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One of the most insidious threats to sea turtles in West-Central Africa is the impact of coastal development. Two coastal towns that illustrate this phenomenon well are the megacities of Lagos, Nigeria, and Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo. More adult sea turtles and nests have been lost to direct take as urban expansion and coastal settlement in those cities have brought increased light, ocean pollution and vessel traffic.
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The recent collapse of a tailings dam at a Samarco ore mine in the municipality of Mariana, Minas Gerais, Brazil, is now being called the worst environmental disaster in the country’s history. In the state of Espírito Santo at the mouth of the Rio Doce, pollutants ultimately despoiled globally important leatherback and loggerhead nesting beaches.
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South America has nearly 90,000 miles of coastline, and five of the world’s seven sea turtle species call the Pacific, Atlantic, and Caribbean waters and the beaches of South America their home for at least part of their life cycles.
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Where Cape Cod juts into the Atlantic Ocean from the east coast of the United States, it forms Cape Cod Bay and the southern end of Massachusetts Bay. The area, which bears the grim moniker “the Deadly Bucket,” is the site of the world’s largest recurring sea turtle stranding phenomenon.
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São Tomé and Príncipe is somewhat lost and forgotten by the rest of the world. The few outsiders who do visit the country usually comment on the excellent coffee, the excellent chocolate (considered among the best in the world), and their shock at seeing sea turtle meat being openly sold in the market and sea turtles butchered on the islands’ picture-perfect beaches.
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Kemp’s ridleys evaded the notice of scientists until the late 1800s. Once discovered, scientists took nearly 100 years to find out where and how they reproduce. In the past five years, an unexplained precipitous population decline has scientists scrambling to solve yet another riddle, one that will determine if the future of this critically endangered species is again in jeopardy.
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