Turtles in the news

An interesting article on the BBC web site, reported the stranding of tens of turtles of the Queensland coast in Australia. Reading the article, which is accompanied by a beautiful Leatherback picture, we find out that the turtles are likely to be starving and or cold stunned. Yasi, a category 5 Hurricane, struck the Queensland coast in early February 2011, damaging the barrier reef and the seagrass beds.

Picture linked in the BBC article - Leatherback turtle.

Well leatherbacks don’t eat seagrass so what is the problem? 

The last paragraph reveals that:

‘The coastal waters of Queensland are important breeding grounds for several species of marine turtles, including the Loggerhead, Hawksbill and Flatback.’

Hawksbills mainly eat sponges, Loggerheads feed on invertebrates, so it leaves us with the Flatback, Natator depressus. They have a varied diet including seagrass and other mollusks and jelly fish; so surely one food source being destroyed shouldn’t be a cause to them washing up...

No content with the article and the explanation, and having a feeling that the article may be talking about Green turtles, a few minutes investigation find an article on abc Far NorthQueensland. Now they should have a bit more information… and they do:

"The seagrass has been destroyedand these animals, the green [turtles], that live off it are are literallystarving," Dr Gilbert said.

So Yasi seems to be the culprit, but the victims, as suspected were the Greens!

Green turtles mainly eat seagrass and their destruction during the hurricane is meaning they are going hungry. However seagrass beds face many threats, not only hurricanes and in years to come this sort of thing may become a more regular occurrence.

edit December 5th: Seabeds recover, turtle strandings down.