Fighting to save sea turtles
LA SABANA, Venezuela — Pedro Luis Pérez woke up early on the clear, sunny morning to check on his hatchlings. At his nursery, a small, fenced-in square on the beach in this coastal town, a tiny loggerhead sea turtle struggled to break free from the warm sand.
Pérez stuck his hand into the sand and helped the creature out.
“This one was born to succeed,” he said.
But he was one of only a few. In his nest of 100 eggs, the last of the season, just 13 survived.
The turtles of La Sabana are vanishing. This small town on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, known for producing such baseball stars as Alcides Escobar and Ronald Acuña Jr., is home to four of the seven sea turtle species on Earth.
Hawksbill sea turtles are classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as critically endangered: Facing an “extremely high risk” of extinction in the wild in the “immediate future.” Green and leatherback sea turtles are endangered: facing a “very high risk” of such extinction in the “near future.”
The loggerheads are designated as vulnerable: facing a “high risk” in the “near future.” Their global population, once in the millions, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, is down to an estimated 50,000. The greatest threats to the species include the loss of nesting grounds to coastal development and predators, entanglement in fishing equipment intended to catch other species, and pollution, according to the Gainesville, Fla.-based Sea Turtle Conservancy.
Adult sea turtles come to La Sabana each spring to lay eggs in the sand. The hatchlings emerge a few months later and head instinctively for the sea — a phenomenon that draws animal lovers and conservationists. Pérez and a team of local volunteers had spent years caring for and protecting these babies. But now a silent killer was spreading.
Pérez reviewed his handwritten notes for the day. He records the number of hatchlings born alive and the number of rotten eggs. Before this season, he said, he had never seen such low survival rates. A few weeks earlier, in a nest of 100 eggs, only two survived.
“We can’t figure out what is happening,” Pérez said.
In the weeks to come, he would learn that a similar crisis was emerging in a turtle population more than 300 miles away — a key to solving the mystery. But he and his team are still waiting for help saving the turtles.
Biologists studying turtles at Parguito Beach, a much-visited strand on Venezuela’s Isla Margarita, were also seeing plummeting survival rates. Biology student Angélica Burgos, a volunteer with the Nueva Esparta State Sea Turtle Conservation Group, identified a change in the local ecology as early as 2014, she told The Washington Post. “We realized that we were in the presence of an introduced plant,” she said.
Scaevola sericea, also known as beach cabbage or sea lettuce, thrives in the mangrove swamps of the South Pacific. On Margarita, biologists found its roots were crowding out the eggs before the turtles were even fully formed.
“We observed in the nests that the roots would occupy almost 80% of the hole,” Burgos said.
A Post reporter shared this information with Pérez back in La Sabana. He called Burgos to ask for a picture of the plant.
Pérez, who was sitting under a palm tree in front of the beach, looked at the photo on his phone and instantly recognized it.
It’s unknown how the sea lettuce arrived in Venezuela, but it remains difficult to eradicate.