Sea turtle conservation in Florida is facing some challenges. For decades, conservation efforts have helped these iconic animals rebound from the brink of extinction. But as is often the case with wildlife conservation, new threats have emerged. This time, it's something we're all a little familiar with, called climate change. We're going to talk about how the increase in hurricane intensity and sea level rise are impacting the conservation of sea turtles and explore what
we can do to help with this conservation. On this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lord, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, we're going to be discussing something
pretty cool, sea turtles. Sea turtles are always huge. hit when we talk about conservation of marine life. They are an iconic species. They're something that we want to fall in love with. We do fall in love with and they've actually spurred one of the biggest campaigns against plastic pollution of the straw, especially and has resulted in the banning of plastic straws for better or for worse. What people like or don't like sea turtles. caused it to happen. So we're
going to talk about that on today's episode. Before we do, if you are new to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast and this company Speak Up for Blue, you probably want to know like, hey, like, how do I get more information on the ocean? That's easy. You can go to www.speakupforblue.com. Go to our website. You can find all of our old episodes. You can find our
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then receiving information Monday to Friday at 8 a.m. Eastern to find out the latest in news, the latest episodes that we have out, as well as the latest job advertisements so that you can dedicate your entire career to protecting the ocean. Let's go to speakupforblue.com, Forge Last Newsletter. Let's get into the show. Let's start with some good news. Over the last few decades, Florida
sea turtles have been a conservation success story. You don't always hear that coming out of in Florida with in regards to the environment, but thanks to efforts like protecting nesting areas, beach cleanups, and educational programs, the number of sea turtle hatchings has soared. And I can be one to attest for sea turtle nests being protected because I have a story that I tell, I've told it quite a bit, but if you're new
here, this is the first time you've heard. But one of the things that my daughter Jade and I have shared over time, when she was actually younger, she doesn't remember this as much as I do, she was only nine months old. We went to Florida, we were down near in the Miami area,
and we were staying in a hotel. This hotel was right on the beach, and she got up a little early, she was nine months old, and I didn't want my other daughter and my wife to wake up, so I took her down to the beach, we watched the sunrise along the beach. It's like, what is a better way to spend time with your daughter. So we sit down on the beach, we watch the sunrise, and as the sun was rising, we can see a mound of
sand that's right in front of us, about 10 feet away. And I was like, oh my gosh, I think this is a sea turtle nest, because I can see the tracks going from the ocean and then back into the ocean, almost as if they were just going over each other. It was quite a large sea turtle. I still don't know what sea turtle it was, but I said, okay, something has got to be done here, because I know in Florida, they
protect sea turtles and the sea turtle nest. So I go back to the hotel, The first thing I did, I emailed the sea turtle listserv, and I said, hey, what happens if I think there's a sea turtle nest on the beach? They said, contact Fish and Wildlife, or just tell the hotel they will contact Fish and Wildlife. So I contact Fish and Wildlife. Florida's Fish and Wildlife crew
come out. They protect the sea turtle nest. And my other daughter, Taya, who was about two or three at the time, she was down there, and she was protecting the nest. She was taking any kind of plastic off in and around the area. I wouldn't let her go in the barricaded area, because that's what it was. It was barricaded. And so she would take it off. So we can attest, my family can attest, like by seeing it, how well these sea turtles are protected, which
is great to see. And we've seen a rise in the number of sea turtle nests that have had, and probably hundreds of thousands of sea turtle nests and hatchlings have actually hatched every year and they come back. And we've seen it not only in Florida, but all the way up to Georgia and all the way up to the Carolinas, which is kind of cool to see. So. That's always great. However, the 2024 hurricane
season showed us just how vulnerable this progress is. This year's season started earlier and was more intense than ever. Hurricane Beryl, a Category 5 storm, made landfall in July, the heart of the sea turtle nesting season. Then came Hurricane Debbie, which destroyed hundreds of nests along Florida's Gulf Coast. So think about it. A mother turtle comes ashore, painstakingly digs
a nest. You have to think about how hard it is for a sea turtle to get out of the water and to move its body up the beach, get there, dig out a nest, and then lay, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of like hundreds of eggs. Weeks later, a storm surge washes it all away. For a conservationist, it's devastating. These storms don't just destroy the nests, they also erode beaches, leaving less
space for turtles to nest in the future. Dr. Jake Lasala, a sea turtle biologist, put it bluntly, climate change is impacting our nesting beaches whether we like it or not. So why does this matter? Sea turtles play a crucial role in marine ecosystems. They maintain the health of seagrass beds and coral reefs, which in turn support countless marine species. Losing sea turtles could ripple across the ocean ecosystem. Sea turtles travel, not just locally, but they travel across oceans.
One of the first tagged sea turtles that was very well documented by Wallace J. Nichols, may he rest in peace, noticed that the sea turtle was tagged in Baja, California, and it went to Japan. That's how far it traveled. So these sea turtles are not only just staying locally and protecting coral reefs locally and seagrasses, maintaining their health and taking out unhealthy seagrasses by eating them and so forth, but they're traveling from place to place to
place across the Pacific, across the Atlantic. They're traveling all over the place and they're stopping off in certain spots to feed, right, to take care and protect those areas. We just don't realize it. And it's really interesting because there have been studies. Dr. Nathan Robbins, a friend of the podcast and a friend of mine, has come on this podcast and talked about sort of what the little critters on the shells have actually, where
they've actually been. You can tell where the sea turtles have been based on the epibiotes who are on the sea turtle shell. right? They actually pick them up as they go from place to place. Cause they sit down, they rest, they'll eat some things and things grab on or, or, you know, stick on the shells just as they go. And they travel with them wherever they go. Kind of a cool thing, but you know, they travel in many places and they become very important, not only just
locally, but internationally as well. So what can we do to help? So protecting sea turtles from impacts on climate change is no small task, but there are some steps you can take. Support beach conservation programs. Many organizations work tirelessly to protect nesting sites, restore eroded beaches, and relocate vulnerable nests. The Loggerhead Marine Life Center is one of those institutes in Jupiter, Florida that help nesting sea turtles that help sick sea
turtles and make sure that they get better and release them. There are many organizations along Florida's coast, whether it be the Gulf Coast, the Atlantic Coast, or even up the coast all the way up to the Carolinas. You can find those organizations and you can help support those by donating directly to them. they are
very happy to take your donations because they put in so much work. It takes resources, it takes people to put in place to make sure that these sea turtle beaches are protected and to make sure that we are monitoring and gathering data on them. They're very, very important and I highly recommend that you donate to them. So that's the first one. Number two, advocate for climate action. Reducing
greenhouse gas emissions can help slow intensification of hurricanes. That's an individual thing, but it's also a bigger thing by pressuring your government representative. You can do this at home. You can do this individually as well as part of your community to say, hey, let's lower our greenhouse gas footprint and let's try and do alternative things. So if you can afford it, get an EV or a hybrid, something that will allow you to depend more on electricity rather than gasoline.
Those are probably better in the long run. If you can't afford that, that's okay. Work up to afford. They're getting more and more affordable now, and they're getting easier to move around cities and towns and countrysides because they're putting more charging stations in place, as well as you can charge at home. It is a little bit more of a cost up front, but overall, I have an EV and not paying for gasoline has saved me a ton. Plus, just
a little secret here. You don't have to bring it in for oil changes. You don't have to bring in an EV for to handle all of these like the transmission or there is none right you have a battery and they last a long time so check that out highly recommend it but also make sure that it fits within your budget and within your lifestyle it's very important but you can also get you know heat converters that are fairly inexpensive and there are probably incentives
for the government to buy them. And so you can get credit, you can get money back. Those are really important too. I'm actually looking into a heat exchanger this year, in 2025, to see if we can lower our natural gas dependence. 3. Get involved locally. Volunteer with organizations or support them financially to help sustain their work. that are working on protecting beaches, protecting the environment that sea turtles are in, like coral reefs, sea grasses, and
even mangroves. And you can help them protect through policies, actually, through advocacy, through working with government, not just physically being there. You can do both, or you can do one or the other, but there are a lot of different ways that you can protect these organizations. And I think it's an important aspect. And I think it's an important aspect to think about when we are trying to do something good for
these organizations. Any type of study or any type of organization that is not only working policy, but also there could be some that are tagging that are looking at ways to gather data on sea turtles to work with local communities with
sea turtles, especially in Central America. You see a lot of organizations working with communities to take away their dependence on poaching and trying to get eggs and trying to eat sea turtles and working more on ecotourism or other ways of making income so that the sea turtles are protected in those areas. So it's an important aspect to protect that. Going up against climate change is difficult. I'm not going to lie. It's not something that is easily attained. The goal is not always achieved.
Depending on the governments, and we know in the U.S. and in Canada in a year, it'll be even more difficult because there will be a new government, right, a new administration that cares less about climate change and more about fossil fuels. That's going to be a big challenge. But it doesn't mean you stop advocating for climate change reduction and climate change action. It is what
we need to do. This story is a reminder of the challenges climate change brings to ocean conservation, including the other story that it reminds me of is the story that I put a couple of episodes ago where we talked about the MERS birds. that went from a population of 8 million to a population of 4 million. That wasn't directly affected by climate change, but are starving because their prey are no longer at the plentiful numbers
that they need to be at. So they are starving because of climate change, because of the blob, because of sea surface temperature, sea surface temperature increase. You can check out that story right up here that I'll link to in this video and in this podcast. so that you can get access to it as well and you can watch it. This is not an isolated problem just with sea turtles. We are losing beaches because of sea level rise. We are losing beaches because
of increased storms like hurricanes and the intensity of storms. But we are also at the mercy of climate change and the consequences that come from that, right? Storm surges, loss due to erosion of habitat, all these things. It's not something that is easily dealt with. Sea turtles have been around for millions of years, surviving countless of challenges. So with your help, they can help survive this one too. And I feel, and I know, I don't just feel, I know that we can get
around this climate change. I know that we can not only adapt, but we can reduce our greenhouse gases. It just takes us all to do that. But that's it for today's episode. I would love to hear what you think of sea turtle protection, sea turtle conservation. If you have any kind of experience in it, I would love to hear from you. Hit me up on, on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean. I'd love to hear from you. That's at HowToProtectTheOcean on
Instagram. And of course, if you want to find out more information, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss any of our episodes that we drop Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. And that's it for today's episode of the How to Project the Ocean podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you have a great day. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.