“Mojo,” a 500+ pound leatherback sea turtle, stranded on Miami’s South Beach just before the new year. He’s estimated to be 30 to 35 years old. According to NOAA, leatherback sea turtles are the largest turtles in the world. They’re the only species lacking scales and a hard shell and have existed in their current […]
Tag: leatherback sea turtle
The weird creatures coming to beaches as Wales becomes ‘more like the Med’
Sightings of unusual and exotic marine species will become more common on Welsh coasts as sea temperatures rise, a marine biologist has said. Over the coming years, warm-water sharks, turtles and jellyfish will visit in greater numbers and for longer periods if current trends continue. Some creatures may pose a greater risk to beachgoers, prompting […]
Nicaragua crisis takes an environmental toll with plunder of turtle eggs
Some 2,000 sea turtle nests were raided and at least six turtles killed in La Flor Wildlife Refuge on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast during the summer of 2018, according to a conservation NGO. Environmental and scientific organizations have condemned the scale of the raids, which were much larger than the usual episodes that occur on the […]
Over 350 species added to the IUCN Red List’s threatened categories in the last six months
The number of threatened species on the IUCN Red List has grown by 352 since this summer, according to an update released today. Currently, 21,286 species are now listed as threatened with extinction out of the 71,576 that have been evaluated. The new update comes with both good and bad news for a number of […]
Eighty sea turtles wash up dead on the coast of Guatemala
An assortment of marine animals and birds reside along the black volcanic sand beaches of Guatemala’s Pacific coast, but lately both residents and visitors on the southeast beaches of the country have observed a tragic event – the stranding of dead sea turtles. Eighty dead sea turtles have been recorded since the first week of […]
California and Indonesia Urged to Build Relationships to Save Leatherback Sea Turtles
In response to Governor Brown’s signing of Assembly Bill 1776, which designates the endangered leatherback sea turtle as California’s official state reptile and designates October 15 as Leatherback Conservation Day, state and federal agencies have been encouraged to build cooperative relationships with the Western Pacific island nations, where Pacific leatherback sea turtles return from California […]
Removing Walls of Death: Saving Sea Turtles from Drift Nets
An endangered Pacific leatherback sea turtle swims through the cold, nutrient-rich waters off California where it has made an impressive journey from its nesting beaches in Indonesia to feed on jellyfish. But, it encounters an unwelcome surprise, a mile long drift net in which its flipper becomes entangled. Because this net sits overnight in the […]