Stupid sea turtle question

[puddleglum]

I am sure most of us are familiar with the nature documentary staple of baby sea turtles trying to make it to the water through a gauntlet of sea birds and crabs. Once the baby turtle gets to the water they can be drowned by the surf or eaten by other predators until the find their way to the deeper water where they live by eating jellyfish. The odds of a baby sea turtle making it to adulthood are about 1 in 1000.
Because of habitat depletion and plastic poisoning most species of sea turtles are endangered and there are many programs designed to help sea turtles survive. Most of these seem to involve staking out nests so they are undisturbed and getting people to turn off lights so the turtles go to the sea and not to the bright lights.
It seems to me the obvious way to help sea turtle populations would be to wait by the nest with a basket and scoop the baby sea turtles into the basket and then take them on a boat to the deep water. Thus no turtles die on the beach or shallow water and instead of one in a thousand surviving you might get 5 or ten per thousand making it to adulthood.
I googled this the best I could but can not find any record of people transporting baby sea turtles like this. There must be a good reason no one does this but I can’t think of it. I know it would be alot of work but sea turtle eggs hatch around the same time each year for a short period so it would be alot of work for a couple weeks and then nothing the rest of the year.

[Mangetout]

I believe it’s the case that turtles normally return as breeding adults to the beach where they were born - that could be a problem if they don’t experience the land to sea transition in the normal way.

[Arkcon]

Presumably, we could do that, or even more, like rear them in a particular safe aquarium environment. We generally reserve such stringent, and expensive steps, for species in serious danger of extinction. There seems to be a meme with biologists that the best way to preserve a species is to allow natural selection to work as unaffected as possible. Example, if 10% of those hatchlings have deformed limbs, do we coddle those too. Carefully rear them so the widdle turt-turts gwoed up to big old mommy and daddies, and propagate the defect? Why are some deformed and some not? Are the healthy ones lucky, or do they carry a genetic propensity to do better things while they’re growing, and shouldn’t that be encouraged in preference. Even worse, does what we consider to be superior or defective actually apply, in the grand scheme of things? We don’t really know. So we try to muddle as little as possible.

[Iggy]

The Cayman Islands has something similar to what the OP suggests, though I believe they simply release the turtles into shallow water.

The Department of Environment recruits volunteers and train them to recognize turtle tracks in the sand. The volunteers take a morning walk each day and take note of any new tracks and nests. The DOE staff take note of the location and since they know within 24 hours when the nest was laid that really narrows down the time the hatchlings are likely to emerge.

The alternative, and much more criticized way, of boosting sea turtle numbers is to farm them. The Cayman Turtle Farm does just that, raising green sea turtles from a captive population. Many are butchered for their meat but the lucky few are released to the wild after a head start of a couple years of growing at the farm. The meat produced at the farm is a way to satisfy local demand (turtle being a historically popular dish in Cayman) without poaching from the wild population.

[wevets]

While it’s very photogenic to film sea turtles during their famed journey from nest to sea, the threat from predators during that journey is not the major threat to the existence of various species of sea turtles.
Instead, the major threats to sea turtle population come from:

• Fishing (either as accidental bycatch or deliberately as target of fisheries)

• Habitat modification/destruction - humans change beach shape, activity, lighting, and other features of beaches dramatically, reducing the probability that beaches will be found and used by sea turtles to breed. We also cause major changes in feeding habitat, such as coral reefs, through runoff, fishing, coral collecting and recreational activity, dredging, etc.

• Ingestion of inedible materials - plastic is in particular a large problem because plastic items resemble food such as sea jellies to turtles underwater. Once ingested, plastic is extremely difficult to digest, reducing the space available for actual food in the digestive tract and sometimes closing the digestive tract entirely.

• Environmental contamination of various types, including oil spills, both the dramatic accidents and the spills incidental to normal operations of all types of fueled vessels, strikes by vessels, noise created by boats, drilling, and geological exploration activities.
  In light of these major threats, the bringing of turtles from the beach to the sea is a very minor issue.

Some examples for a few turtle species:

@NOAA

Hawksbills face threats on both nesting beaches and in the marine environment. The primary global threat to hawksbills is habitat loss of coral reef communities. Coral reefs are vulnerable to destruction and degradation caused by human activities. Humans can alter coral reefs either gradually (i.e., pollution can degrade habitat quality) or catastrophically (for example, toxic spills and vessel groundings). Recent evidence suggests that global climate change is negatively impacting coral reefs by causing higher incidences of coral diseases, which can ultimately kill entire coral reef communities. Hawksbill turtles rely on coral reefs for food resources and habitat. As these communities continue to decline in quantity and quality, hawksbills will have reduced foraging opportunities and limited habitat options.

Historically, commercial exploitation was the primary cause of the decline of hawksbill sea turtles. There remains a continuing demand for the hawksbill’s shell as well as other products, including leather, oil, perfume, and cosmetics. The British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Haiti, and the Turks and Caicos Islands (U.K.) all permit some form of legal take of hawksbill turtles. In the northern Caribbean, hawksbills are directly harvested primarily for their carapace, which is often carved into hair clips, combs, jewelry, and other trinkets. Whole stuffed turtles are sold as curios in the tourist trade. Hawksbill products are openly available in the Dominican Republic and Jamaica despite a prohibition on harvesting hawksbills and eggs (Fleming 2001).

From the National Marine Fisheries Service

@NOAA

The principal cause of the historical, worldwide decline of the green turtle is long-term harvest of eggs and adults on nesting beaches and juveniles and adults on feeding grounds. These harvests continue in some areas of the world and compromise efforts to recover this species.

Incidental capture in fishing gear, primarily in gillnets, but also in trawls, traps and pots, longlines, and dredges is a serious ongoing source of mortality that also adversely affects the species’ recovery.

Green turtles are also threatened, in some areas of the world, by a disease known as fibropapillomatosis (FP).

Also from the National Marine Fisheries Service

@NOAA

Leatherback turtles face threats on both nesting beaches and in the marine environment. The greatest causes of decline and the continuing primary threats to leatherbacks worldwide are long-term harvest and incidental capture in fishing gear. Harvest of eggs and adults occurs on nesting beaches while juveniles and adults are harvested on feeding grounds. Incidental capture primarily occurs in gillnets, but also in trawls, traps and pots, longlines, and dredges. Together these threats are serious ongoing sources of mortality that adversely affect the species’ recovery.

Same source

@NOAA

Kemp’s ridleys face threats on both nesting beaches and in the marine environment. The greatest cause of decline and the continuing primary threat to Kemp’s ridleys is incidental capture in fishing gear, primarily in shrimp trawls, but also in gill nets, longlines, traps and pots, and dredges in the Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic.

Egg collection was an extreme threat to the population, but since nesting beaches were afforded official protection in 1966, this threat no longer poses a major concern.

Yet another NFMS page
So you can see that the predation by seagulls, crabs, ravens, etc. of young on the way from the nests/beaches to the sea is not likely to have as large a conservation impact as changing human behavior around egging and fishing, beach modification, and ocean modification. That’s why carrying sea turtles in a basket is likely to feel good, but not really be a great boon to the turtle population.

[GiantRat]

Why don’t we just ask a stupid sea turtle the question?

[Smeghead]

Because they’re stupid.

[the_diego]

I’m mystified by one fact about Philippine sea turtles. The best time to release hatchlings (in a specific beach) is early morning. The scientists say that’s before predatory fish and birds come out to hunt. Therefore: any hatching during “happy hour” means almost no hatchling makes it alive past day 1.

[wevets]

The large number of sea turtle hatchlings from a single mating pair, together with the limited parenting effort expended by sea turtle parents, is a good example of r-selected reproduction strategy. While the theory itself is of pretty limited utility, it does describe that it’s very common for species to adopt an evolutionary strategy that includes limited or non-existent care for the young, accepting high infant mortality, yet thrive.

Rats, cockroaches, and most spiders are also r-selected strategists compared to humans, but nobody seems worried that 1 in 400,000* spider hatchlings survive to adulthood.

*Number comes from a posterior source - not to be taken literally.

[Sailboat]

Few people want 400,000 more spiders.

[wevets]

Aha! But if spiders adopted a K-selected reproduction strategy, they’d have an average of two point five children and lull you to sleep by playing Verdi on their webs each night.

You see the dilemma?

[Bob_X]

@Smeghead

Because they’re stupid.

I saw Billy Connolly once, saying he’d be envious of turtles for living like 400 years, “except that they don’t learn a fooking thing! After all that time they’re still [breast-stroking slowly with his arms] mmmmllllaaaah, mmmmmllllaaahh…”

[Yeticus_Rex]

Excuse me, Stewardess? I speak Stoopid Sea Turtle.

[Wallaby]

And dolphins - they just muck around in the water all day having a good time. How silly is that?