The Leatherback Sea Turtle | Conservation

The Leatherback sea turtle are classified as critically endangered. The exact number of Leatherback turtles is impossible to know. The fact that the male turtles never return to land, makes it impossible to count them. At the moment it’s estimated that there’s only 35.000 nesting females.

To avoid not break as they fall down to the chamber, the eggs have a rubbery shell, which helps to keep them from breaking as they fall into the chamber on top of one another.

After hatching the small baby turtles are easy prey for many predators. . As long as they stay on the beach they’re prey for gulls, hawks, ghost crabs, vultures etc. Once they are in the ocean, the turtles become potential prey for octopi, sharks, and other large fish.

If the Leatherback hatchlings emerge from a nest that is located on a beach that includes or is near a developed area, such as a resort, they may find that the brightest spot on the horizon is not the sea, but rather the light coming from the development. This causes the hatchlings to become disoriented and to head away from the ocean instead of toward it, increasing their risk of predation and dehydration before successfully reaching water.

The greatest predator of the Leatherback, however, is people. In some countries, humans kill nesting female turtles and harvest Leatherback eggs to eat. Because the turtles leave a trail to their nests when they make their way back to the water, the nests are easy for egg poachers to locate.

Not only killer whales and sharks are the reasons when you see a turtle who has lost a flipper or are injured. Entanglement in fishing gear can result in serious injuries to the turtles, including severe cuts and necrosis or in worst case death. Entanglement can also lead to death by drowning. Sometimes Leatherbacks has the size and power to swim to the surface of the water, when it’s trapped in fishing lines and gear, where they are discovered and released. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

Leatherbacks are also at risk from garbage and other pollution in the sea. Eating or becoming entangled in plastic from sheeting, bags, deflated balloons, discarded fishing lines and more has been the reason for the death of many Leatherback sea turtles. It’s believed by many that the Leatherbacks mistake the floating plastic for jellyfish and eat it..

The fact that the Leatherback never has developed the ability to swim backwards, poses some difficulty when the animal encounters fishing nets and lines in the ocean because it has no hope of backing out of them.

It also poses a major difficulty to scientists attempting to raise Leatherbacks in captivity. In fact, Leatherbacks have never been successfully raised to maturity in captivity. Leatherbacks kept in a tank continually propel themselves against the sides of the aquarium as they ceaselessly swim forward. They inevitably damage themselves in the process and develop lethal fungal infections as a result.

Not being able to raise Leatherbacks in captivity means that scientists cannot observe captive specimens to determine how quickly they grow or how long they live. It also means that a “head-start” program cannot supplement Leatherback conservation efforts. A head-start program would keep hatchling Leatherbacks in captivity until they grew to a size that makes them less vulnerable to predators.