Green sea turtle - Picture by: Mila Zinkova

– BP is in some very hot water over their practice of burning sea turtles, while trying to clean up their mess in the Gulf of Mexico. The initiative is being headed by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Turtle Island Restoration Network.

They officially notified the U.S. Coast Guard and BP of their intent to launch a lawsuit for them to stop burning endangered sea turtles alive, and have given an ultimatum of 60 days in order to do so. If the action is not stopped a lawsuit will be filed under the Endangered Species Act.

Todd Steiner, biologist and executive director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network has this to say on the subject “BP is burning turtles alive and it is cruel, heartless and a crime we can’t and won’t allow to continue, sea turtles were critically endangered before BP created America’s worst environmental catastrophe, and every effort possible must be taken to rescue endangered turtles from this oil spill. BP needs to reverse course and help double our efforts to rescue sea turtles, not prevent their recovery.”

The spill really did happen at an inopportune time, as the rare Kemp’s ridley sea turtles started to nest in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP wound up in this mess, as they started a burning process, as they didn’t allow enough time for rescue boats to make a search, and get the sea turtles out of harms way.

Last month, 82 Green sea turtles hatched at SeaWorld in San Diego, California.

The eggs hatched on Shipwreck Beach and the youngsters didn’t need any human aid to get out of their shells and into the water. The park had decided to let nature take its course by refraining from incubating the eggs or help the hatchlings emerge. SeaWorld are now planning to dig up the beach to check if any buried eggs failed to hatch.

At the moment, the baby sea turtles are roughly one month old and only weigh a few grams. They happily feed on squid, shrimp, krill and special pellets. Assistant curator of fishes Tim Downing says they are all in excellent health and that they will go on display before the end of the year.

“There is so much that is not known about sea turtles,” said Downing. “We are getting real good information on the growth rate of juveniles. They are all gaining weight and doing well. We have done some X-rays, and they are progressing just like we would expect them to.”

SeaWorld is home to 30 adult sea turtles, including four Green sea turtles – three females and one male. They have been living at SeaWorld since the 1960s and are sexually mature, so all three females may have buried eggs in the sand. Only genetic testing will be able to reveal the maternity of each baby turtle.

All seven species of sea turtle in the world are endangered or threatened, with the Green sea turtle being listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It will be up to the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to determine whether the new turtles will stay at SeaWorld and whether the adult turtles will be given opportunity to mate again next year.

One of the most controversial environmental issues of the past decade now seems to have been solved thanks to the consolidated efforts of one U.S. and one U.K. researcher.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers started getting reports of numerous deformed wild frogs and toads. Many of them missed a limb partly or completely, while others – even more strikingly – had extra legs or extra arms.

The reason behind the deformities became a hot-potato, with some people suspecting chemical pollution or increased UV-B radiation (brought on by the thinning of the ozone layers), while others leaned towards predators or parasites.

“There was a veritable media firestorm, with millions of dollars of grant money at stake,” says Stanley Sessions, an amphibian specialist and professor of biology at Hartwick College, in Oneonta, New York.
Eventually, professor Sessions and other researchers managed to show that many amphibians with extra limbs were actually infected by small parasitic flatworms called Riberoria trematodes. These nematodes burrow into the hindquarters of tadpoles and rearrange the limb bud cells. This interferes with limb development, and in some cases the result is an extra arm or leg.

While these findings explained the conspicuous presences of additional limbs, it wasn’t enough to solve the mystery of the leg- and armless amphibians.

“Frogs with extra limbs may have been the most dramatic-looking deformities, but they are by far the least common deformities found,” Sessions explains. “The most commonly found deformities are frogs or toads found with missing or truncated limbs, and although parasites occasionally cause limblessness in a frog, these deformities are almost never associated with the trematode species known to cause extra limbs.”

To investigate the conundrum, Sessions teamed up with UK researcher Brandon Ballengee of the University of Plymouth. As a part of a larger research project, the two scientists placed tadpoles in aquariums and added various predators to see if any of them could be responsible for this type of injuries.

As it turned out, three different species of dragonfly nymph happily attacked and nicked of the hind legs of the tadpoles; feasting on the tasty legs without actually killing the tadpoles.

“Once they grab the tadpole, they use their front legs to turn it around, searching for the tender bits, in this case the hind limb buds, which they then snip off with their mandibles,” says Sessions. “Often the tadpole is released […],” says Sessions. “If it survives it metamorphoses into a toad with missing or deformed hind limbs, depending on the developmental stage of the tadpole.”

Eating just a leg instead of trying to kill the entire tadpole is beneficial for the dragonfly, since tadpoles develop poison glands in their skin much earlier than those in their hind legs.

Through surgical experiments, Sessions and Ballengee confirmed that losing a limb at a certain stage of a tadpole’s life can lead to missing or deformed limbs in the adult animal. Really young tadpoles are capable of growing a new limb, but they loose this ability with age.

Sessions stresses that the results of his study doesn’t completely rule out chemicals as the cause of some missing limbs, but says that this type of “selective predation” by dragonfly nymphs is now by far the leading explanation.

“Are parasites sufficient to cause extra limbs?,” he asks. “Yes. Is selective predation by dragonfly nymphs sufficient to cause loss or reduction of limbs. Yes. Are chemical pollutants necessary to understand either of these phenomena? No.”

You can find Sessions and Ballengee’s study in the Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution.

A Cape Cod company is now launching a timer that might help save dwindling populations of sea turtles from being decimated by fishing nets.

The new device is a 7-inch (18 cm) long silver cylinder capable of keeping track of how long a net has been submerged. Federal research indicates that a vast majority of entangled sea turtles will survive if they are rescued and given a chance to breath within 50 minutes.

Green sea turtle –Chelonia mydas : Picture by Mila Zinkova

As soon as the device reaches a depth of at least two metres, it will start recording water depth every 30 seconds and it will also make note of any time-limit breaches. Since the honour system might not be enough, the timer has been built to save its data for later download by marine authorities.

Fishermen using the timer will not only help save the sea turtles; they may also be able to save themselves from more onerous regulations, such as no-fishing zones. The timer is naturally not a one-size fits all fix-all to the problem with turtles being drowned in fishing nets, but it might prove useful for certain types of nets in certain conditions.

The logger was built under a $25,000 federal contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by Onset Computer Corp., a Bourne-based supplier of data loggers for energy and environmental monitoring.

The juvenile Hawksbill turtle found near-dead 8 months ago with a plastic shopping bag lodged inside her belly has made a remarkable recovery and has now been released back into the ocean. The Hawksbill turtle is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of ThreatenSped ecies, so each specimen that can be rescued is important for the population.

Eight months ago the young female, who has been dubbed Alva by her caregivers, was found halfway up the beach, upside down, with her head buried in the sand, slowly dying in the sun. She was rushed to Townsville’s Reef HQ turtle hospital where x-rays revealed that a large piece of plastic stuck inside her had caused a severe gut blockage.

In addition to receiving treatment for the blockage, Alva was bathed, scrubbed and hand-fed by the turtle hospital staff who gradually nursed her back to life from the near-death experience.

“We brought it back from brink of death”, said Reef HQ aquarium acting director Fred Nucifora. “That is the miracle.”

On May 21, Alva was deemed healthy enough to return to the sea and was released into the water in the Australian Great Barrier Reef Region.

“It was emotional to say goodbye,” said Nucifora. “We’d like to think Alva turned back and gave us a heartfelt look, but it was barely a glance and, with a flick of the flipper, she was off.”

After a request from the Mexico Fishery Management Council, NOAA’s* Fisheries Service announced an emergency rule to protect the threatened sea turtles living in the Gulf of Mexico.

The emergency rule, which was announced on April 30, will take effect on May 18. From May 18 and onwards, the commercial reef fish longline fleet active in these waters will only be allowed to fish seaward of a line approximating the 50-fathom contour in the Gulf of Mexico. (Current regulations allow the fleet to fish as close as the 20-fathoms line.)

The emergency rule will also outlaw all reef fish longline fishing east of 85 degrees 30 minutes west longitude in the Gulf of Mexico after the quotas for deep water grouper and tilefish are reached.

The Mexico Fishery Management Council requested the emergency rule after a NOAA observer study documented how the reef fish longline fleet was incidentally catching and killing a substantial amount of loggerhead sea turtles, a species listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.

The emergency rule will be in effect for 180 days, but can be extended for up to an additional 186 days if necessary. The new rule will primarily affect those who fish for shallow-water grouper species, such as the popular food fish red grouper, since this type of fishing typically takes place in shallow waters within the 50-fathom contour off the west Florida shelf. Fishermen and groupers are however not the only ones occupying this area – it is also a very important feeding ground for sea turtles and therefore the place where most of the incidental sea turtle by-catches take place.

“We are working closely with the council and constituents to find more permanent solutions to protect sea turtles affected by this fishing gear,” said Roy Crabtree, NOAA’s Fisheries Service southeast regional administrator. “I hope we can identify options that not only provide sea turtles the protection they need, but minimize the economic affects to the fishing industry.”

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council is also considering actions to address the problem on a long-term basis.

The emergency rule is implemented in accordance with both the Endangered Species Act and the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The Magnuson-Stevens Act requires that conservation and management measures minimize bycatch of non-target species and minimize mortality when bycatch cannot be avoided.

* National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest lake and the world’s largest tropical lake, has long been plighted by environmental problems caused by pollution and exotic species being introduced to the lake. On of the most well know of these problems was the introduction of Nile perch to the lake; a large predatory fish that all but wiped out the lakes wide variety of native, endemic species.

Moses Kabuusu, Member of Parliament for Kyamuswa country in Kalangala district, has now expressed concerns about another problem developing in the area. According to him the amount of fish in the lake has now become so low that crocodiles are increasingly looking at humans as food. The number of croc attacks on humans has indeed increased in Kalangala, but it is hard to tell whether this is due to less fish being present or if there are other reasons that have increased the number of attacks on humans.

Kabuusu warns people about spending time in the water due to the rampant problem of humans being eaten by crocodiles and adds that it is mostly people swimming in the lake and women getting water in the lake that are being hunted by crocodiles.

He has requested help by the Uganda Wild Authority.

Lake victoria beach.

Deteriorating water quality, invasive species and the practise of draining lakes is now bringing the axolotl, a neotenic mole salamander native to central Mexico, to the brink of extinction. According to researchers the species could disappear in just five years and it is currently listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

“If the axolotl disappears, it would not only be a great loss to biodiversity but to Mexican culture, and would reflect the degeneration of a once-great lake system,” says Luis Zambrano, a biologist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

The axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is native to no more than two lakes, Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco, and Lake Chalco was drained in the 1970s to prevent flooding. The only surviving wild population of axolotl is therefore to be found in Lake Xochimilco; a lake that is rapidly vanishing due to draining efforts. Today, Lake Xochimilco can not even be accurately described as a lake anymore; it is just a series of canals and scattered lagoons. As if this wasn’t bad enough for the axolotl, this salamander also has to combat severe pollution and the introduction of alien species. Mexico City has been pumping its wastewater into the remains of Lake Xochimilco since the 1980s, and both African tilapia and Asian carp have been deliberately introduced to serve as food fish. These alien species compete for prey items with the axolotl and are also fond of eating its eggs.

The exact number of axolotls left in the wild remains unknown, but a survey conducted by Zambrano shows a sharp drop from roughly 1,500 specimens per square mile in 1998 to no more than 25 per square mile in 2008.

One way of improving the situation for the remaining axolotls may be to create a series of axolotl sanctuaries in canals cleared of invasive species, but this would of course require some type of barrier to keep the aliens from returning. A pilot sanctuary is planned to open in Mexico City in 2009.

Repopulating Lake Xochimilco with captive reared specimes has also been suggested, since the axolotl is a popular house pet known to readily breed in captivity. Unfortunately, it is always risky to re-introduce a species into the wild since captive specimens may be carriers of genetic problems or hosts of malicious organisms like parasites, viruses and bacteria.

During the Aztec empire, the axolotl was an important food item as well as an integral part of numerous myths and legends. According to legend, the Aztec god Xolotl – who was in charge of death, lighting and monstrosities – suspected the other gods of plotting to banish or even kill him, and turned himself into a salamander in order to fool them. He moved to Lake Xochimilco where he could stay hidden from the other gods and Xolotl became a-xolotl, blessing the Aztecs with an important source of food. If you visit markets in Mexico City today you can still find axolotls being sold as food. Cooked axolotl is however becoming a more and more scarce dish on Mexican dinner tables, mainly because fishermen almost never find them.

Outside Mexico, the axolotl is more popular as a pet than a snack. It can today be found in pet shops world-wide, sometimes being offered under other names such as Wooper Rooper or Mexican Water Monster. The axolotl is also famous for its ability to regenerate most body parts and is extensively used in scientific research on regeneration and evolution.

This August, a turtle decided to take a stroll through a cannabis garden in a secluded part of one of America’s public parklands. This wouldn’t have been a problem for the resourceful horticulturist responsible for the plantation if it hadn’t been for the fact that this particular turtle was fitted with a GPS tracking device and followed by a park ranger. When the park ranger realised that the turtle had led him to an outdoor hydroponics lab, he contacted the police who stalked out the patch and eventually arrested its illicit gardener.

Florida Box Turtle. Picture by: Jonathan Zander

“He felt like he had a layer of security, but he probably never counted on a turtle with a tracking device leading us to that location and finding the field,” says Sergeant Robert Lachance of the U.S. Park Police. On a personal note I must humbly admit that I likely would have made the same misstake and been caught by Sergeant Robert Lachance as well. But after this I will make sure to consider the risk of turtlea with GPS tracking devices if I ever decide to get into the drug trade. (Just joking!)

The park in question was the Rock Creek Park, a large urban natural area with public park facilities that bisects Washington, D.C. The parklands follow the course of Rock Creek across the border between D.C. and Maryland and connect with the Rock Creek Stream Valley Park and the Rock Creek Regional Park in Montgomery County.

A 25 year old worshipper was killed and eaten by a crocodile in Bangladesh last week. The death took place in a pond next to a shrine and the man was seeking the crocodiles blessing when he was killed.

The man had travelled 50 km to visit the shrine with his mother. The shrine is an important religious place for Muslims in the area. The Khan Jahan Ali shrine is a place where visitors offers hens and goats to the five crocodiles that lives in the pond. Many worshippers bath in the pond as a part of the ritual and the crocodiles seldom injure worshippers although accidents have happened in the past as well although they are rare. The man was making his way into the water to get blessed when the crocodile attacked him and dragged him into the deep parts of the pond.

Numerous other worshippers (around 25) jumped into the pond and tried to find the man. They were unsuccessful and the body of the man was found a few days later when it floated up the surface. Large parts of the body had been eaten.

The crocodiles are apparently normally very friendly.

It should be mentioned that the sacrificing of hens and goats to crocodile is not a part of mainstream Islamic fait and only a small percentage of Muslims do this.