BIG STORM OFF SOUTH AFRICA WASHED 500 BABY SEA TURTLES ASHORE

Thu 02 May 2024:

An aquarium in Cape Town stretched beyond capacity with around 500 baby sea turtles that washed up on beaches due to an unusual powerful storm.

Most of the small turtles are loggerheads, which are endangered and belong to the ocean. Instead, the majority of them will spend their first few months of life in recently constructed plastic tanks at the Two Oceans Aquarium’s Turtle Conservation Center in Cape Town. Of the approximately 530 sick and injured turtles brought in, the aquarium is treating about 400 of them, transferring the remaining turtles to two neighboring aquariums to help share the workload.

Picking up stranded sea turtles in Struisbaai and taking them to the two oceans aquarium foundation.😁 pic.twitter.com/X1fydSsYdV

— Southern Tip Extreme Activity Centre (@_STEAC_) April 19, 2024

From the minute they hatch on beaches and make their way to the ocean, baby turtles are left on their own.

Loggerhead turtles lay their eggs in South Africa’s northeast coast, which is located far from Cape Town. These turtles were likely sucked in by the warm Indian Ocean Agulhas Current, carried around the tip of South Africa and spat out in the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Town.

That’s fairly common, said Talitha Noble-Trull, the head of the Turtle Conservation Center. She’s in charge of treating the new arrivals.

What isn’t normal is the powerful storm that recently hit the Cape Town area, leaving hundreds of baby turtles needing help.

The conservation center usually receives a few to maybe 100 stranded young turtles in the three to four months after hatching season. It has a normal capacity of 150 turtles.

“What we haven’t seen before is over 500 turtles in two weeks, which is what the last little bit of time has brought us,” Noble-Trull said. “My budgeting plans for the year have really gone out the window.”

She estimated that each turtle will cost $500 to get back to full strength before being released into the warmer Indian Ocean in a few months. The Turtle Conservation Center has brought in a small army of volunteers to help the aquarium’s full-time staff care for them.

The turtles are ranked according to how sick they are, with some needing intensive care due to injuries, malnutrition or infection. A number is written on each shell to identify them.

While the storm was a major shock to the turtles, who are vulnerable to extreme weather and climate change, it has given Noble-Trull and other conservationists a valuable insight into another increasingly common danger.

They’re shouting it at us

Many of the turtles had ingested small pieces of plastic, which exited their systems after they arrived at the aquarium. Noble-Trull has a tray of plastic pieces collected in just one day, some as big as a fingernail.

The conservation team normally wouldn’t see that amount of evidence of plastic pollution in the ocean.

“Little bits of soft plastic, little bits of hard plastic are floating all along the oceans and turtles are eating them. So, for us it’s very important to be collecting and capturing this data. Because these turtles are coming at us with a message. They’re not telling us. They’re shouting it at us. That our oceans are not a safe place for turtles,” Noble-Trull said.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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