The sea turtles nest -once or several times a year- but always in the same place, one beach to which they return year after year to lay their eggs and bury the eggs in the nests dug during the night. He heat de la arena is in charge of incubating them afterwards.
This operation, which is repeated on many beaches and islands on the planet, is increasingly threatened by global warming and the rise in sea level that is expected for the middle and end of the century.
Today, a study led by the researcher at the University of Cádiz Marta L. Rivas concludes that, in the coming years, the rise in sea level will flood important breeding beaches for sea turtles in Australia, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and USA.
And of all of them, the leatherback turtles, “the only ones that remain of their family, and the largest and most prehistoric” will be the ones “they will get the worst of it”explains Dr. Rivas.
The study, whose conclusions are published this Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, has been carried out in collaboration with scientists from Australia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, the United Kingdom and the United States.
To carry out the study, the team calculated the probability of flooding in 2,835 sea turtle nesting sites in the scenarios predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the period 2010-2100: mild, moderate and extreme. .
The breeding areas were located on Mondonguillo beach (Costa Rica), the Guanahacabibes peninsula (Cuba), Saona Island (Dominican Republic), the coast of Ecuador, Raine Island (Australia), San Jorge Island ( Florida, USA) and Saint Eustatius (Caribbean, Netherlands).
“These breeding grounds are used by five species of sea turtles: leatherback, loggerhead, hawksbill, olive ridley and green”details the researcher.
According to the study, in a moderate emissions scenario, nursery areas located on flat beaches will be the most vulnerable to flooding.
In this scenario, it is expected that 100% of the nests located in these areas of Australia and the Dominican Republic and 50% of the breeding areas of those beaches in Florida and Ecuador will disappear after the rise of the sea level in the middle of century (2050).
By the end of the century, Rivas points out, 100% of those beaches in Australia, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic would disappear, and more than half of the breeding areas in Ecuador and Florida.
The only ones that would save more than 50% are Cuba and Saint Eustatius because they are “very narrow and steep beaches”, so the rise in sea level will not be as destructive.
“And all this according to the moderate scenario, although the IPCC experts believe that we will reach the extreme scenario”underline.
And while the future does not look bright for any sea turtle species, the study warns that leatherbacks will be “particularly vulnerable to flooding” because they nest in the middle area of the flatter beaches and because of their large size (about 500 kilograms), which makes their movements very difficult.
On the contrary, for hawksbill and green turtles, which tend to nest in higher areas, near dunes and steep cliffs, and which are more agile, there are “certain hopes” maintains Rivas.
no adaptive capacity
Given the rapidity with which sea level rise will occur, sea turtles alone will probably not have the capacity to adapt to this situation and search for alternative beaches, since that, evolutionarily, requires time that the turtles will not have.
For this reason, the study proposes three urgent solutions: move the nests to higher points on the beaches, fill the beaches with sand to raise them, and take the eggs to hatcheries.
Of course, these measures must be done with previous scientific studies that accompany the action and that ensure the success of the laying.
“If we move the eggs to warmer areas we can increase the mortality of the eggs or alter the proportionality between males and females” of the nests because “the higher the temperature, the more females there are”, explains the researcher.
In fact, with global warming, scientists have observed that in certain areas, nests have increased the production of females by 90%.
The authors acknowledge that further research is necessary but warn that the world needs “a global response” to the climate crisis.
“We are in the sixth mass extinction of species but we are still beginning to see the consequences. In a very short time it is expected that the change will be so radical that we will lose most of the planet’s biodiversity and that is a drama that can only be alleviated with strict control measures on the emissions that cause climate change ”, warns Rivas.
Source: EFE
Source: Gestion
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