Green sea turtle conservation: How one species’ recovery gives hope amid a sea of decline

0:00 Not every story about endangered species ends in tragedy. The green sea turtle once on the brink of collapse has rebounded thanks to decades of protection and conservation, but while the turtle shows us what's possible, the latest IUCN red list update warns that Arctic seals and more than half of the world's birds are sliding deeper into trouble. The question is, will we let our most vulnerable species fade away? Or will we choose to follow the turtle's example of recovery? That's what we're gonna talk about in today's 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 Lewin, 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.

0:46 And on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about species that were endangered, just like the green sea turtle. But first I wanna talk about something that I remember every time I talk about sea turtles, and that's the time where my daughter, who is now 16 years old, I can't even believe that, but when she was nine months old, 10 months old, we went to Florida as a family and you know, she's younger so she was in a crib beside we go to a hotel and was in all in one room. So my older daughter was sleeping, she was about two. My wife was sleeping and my youngest daughter got up. Right. So she was, you know, 10 months old. She gets up, it's around six o'clock in the morning. It's a little early. I want my wife and my other daughter to sleep. So I take her down and I go downstairs. I get her ready. We go downstairs, we go to the beach, and we watch the sunrise together.

1:27 A nice little moment between my daughter and I looking at nature. She's having a great time. We're running around on the beach before the beach sand gets too hot, and we just sit there. I put her on my lap and we watch the sunrise as we see the sunrise, what was revealed in front of us was unreal. It was this mound of sand and I knew exactly what it was when I first saw it. I started to tell Jade, my youngest daughter. I was like, Hey, look at this mound. And she thought it was like a little sandcastle, but I'm like, no, it's not a sandcastle, it's this mound. It's a sea turtles. There are sea turtle eggs underneath this mound. And when I looked up and we got up and we didn't go near it. We stayed our distance 'cause you're not supposed to go near a mound like that, a sea turtle nest. But we looked at the tracks going up and down. Like up to the mount and then back down to the ocean.

2:08 It was like perfect unison. It was like straight line. It was actually quite beautiful as we see the sunrise. So I go upstairs after the sunrise and we actually, we go to the lobby first. We tell 'em that there's a sea turtle nest where that's right there and that we got to share that opportunity. And they called Fish and Wildlife, US Fish and Wildlife. This is in Florida. And they kind of marked it off 'cause it was a public beach and they didn't want anybody to step on it. They didn't anybody, anybody to ruin it. So I tell my oldest daughter who's like now going to university in her first year university for wildlife and conservation, which is awesome , wildlife biology and conservation program. She comes down and I tell her what I saw and we show her what we saw. And so she's going around like there's a barricade around the mount and she's going around the mount picking up any type of garbage. And she's like, dad, can we pick this up deck?

2:49 Can we pick this up? Can we pick this up? So we're picking it up. We're putting it in the garbage. I wouldn't let my daughter touch the garbage because, you know. 2-year-old dirty hands, we don't want that. But anyway, so we shared that experience, taking care of these sea turtles she was asking questions and both of them, they were really, really interested in. Now, of course, my 10 month old, she probably kind of forgot about it, but we got to share that experience and that was like this personal thing. This was, you know, almost 16 years ago. At that moment where these sea turtles. You know, I didn't know what species it was, but these sea turtles, like green sea turtles come on that beach. And you start to think they may not be here one day. They're endangered of going extinct, like all seven species at one point. Were endangered of going extinct. There are a lot of people who are doing some phenomenal work. In conservation and research and tagging to find out where these turtles go, making sure they're protected at every point in their journey.

3:35 There are a lot of laws to protect these sea turtles, and it was just wonderful to see this experience that we've had and now, like 16 years later to see that the populations of one of the species has rebounded and now they're getting delisted as endangered and going to least vulnerable, which is great, which is great news. Now of course it comes with some caveats. When you start to de-list in specific areas like countries. I remember telling like a species at risk biologist when I worked for the government in Canada. They were saying, Hey. Yeah. One thing you have to be careful when you delist a species is that there are certain laws or certain reports and monitoring that also go with that. So, you know, when you're an endangered species on the species at risk list or an endangered species list in a specific country, there are specific protections that go with it, but there's also things that you have to do to report on it.

4:18 You have to evaluate the population. You have to come up with recovery plans. You have to monitor the species, you have to do all these things. There's extra money that goes into doing the research to doing projects and to make sure that it's conserved and make sure the area around it is protected as long as the governments don't strip that away. And we saw that with the manatees, right? The manatees back in the 1950s, 1960s, went down to about 600 manatees in Florida, and then they rebounded over like three or four decades because there were all these, you know, recovery plans and monitoring plans, and they went up to about just over 6,000 individuals. Well now they got delisted. There's less monitoring plans and less focus on their protection. And the water quality has kind of gone to hell in Florida. And so we're seeing less.

4:59 Seagrasses. And what do these manes eat? They eat seagrasses, and so we're starting to see less manes, a lot of die offs, a lot of bad water quality that had like acute die offs. So like right away they died off for a number of different individuals, not only manes, but dolphins and sharks and fish and all that kind of stuff. So we have some problems with the manes now, and it's probably gonna have to go back on the list, but once you take 'em off the list, it's really hard to put back on the list. so scientists and managers make sure that when a species is listed as endangered, it's very difficult to take them off because it's very difficult to put 'em back on. So they make sure that if they're delisted. It's fine. In the case of the manes, that was more of a political thing that happened, which, you know, scientists were already concerned about. And so now we're in a problem with manatees decreasing in population because of bad water quality, less seagrass and so forth.

5:44 And that's a big problem, but. We saw a recovery in this population of green sea turtles or in the species of green sea turtles in specific areas, which is great to see. So happy to see that that's happening. And now we move on to the bad news where we saw seals and climate pressure that have taken a hit. So harp hooded and bearded seals in the arctic have moved into higher risk categories. So their survival depends on sea ice. They need sea ice to rest. They need sea ice to eat. When the the ice sea ice is vanishing faster than we predicted because of climate change, which I just talked in the last episode. We were talking a bit more about coral reefs, but there's other species like polar bears and seals in the Arctic that depend on sea ice. When you don't have sea ice, you are at risk of dying more, and you have a risk of not being able to survive, and so you end up losing populations, right?

6:33 Losing individuals and populations. So you know when you have no ground beneath your paw and you are an air breather and you're swimming the whole time. At some point you have to rest. That's why polar bears, although they can swim really long distances, 200, 400 kilometers, I think the longest was 700 kilometers. They still need to rest. They still need to rest on the ice. And same with seals. Their air breathers, they need to rest on the ice, maybe feed on the ice or bask in the sun just be able to rest. If they can't do that on the sea ice 'cause it's not there floating sea ice, then they will die. That's really what happens. They will drown and they will die. And we're starting to see that more and more because there's less sea ice. And we're seeing it with polar bears. We're seeing it with other marine mammals, like, bearded harp and hooded seals in the arctic. That's happening. And that's obviously not a good thing.

7:14 So more protection needs to be done there, but the protection needs to be like, we need to keep this sea ice around. Now, of course, let's move over to the birds Now, you know, 61% of bird species globally are declining. That's more than half 61%. Basically the threats are deforestation. So a lot of forests like Indonesia, Amazon, and Canada, like we're starting to see a lot of deforestation. Whether it's deforestation because of humans, direct humans, or indirect, like climate change and wildfires. We're starting to see a lot of deforestation. Which we all know are habitats for a lot of the birds. Agriculture is increasing, usually because of deforestation. Invasive species are coming in and they're messing around with the food webs and the available resources for these birds to not only be protected, but also to feed.

7:56 And then of course there's climate change. Climate change is changing wind patterns It's making things hotter. It's causing wildfires, which leads to deforestation. It just makes everything worse. And so when we start to see that it becomes worse. Then you got like the human side of it. Obviously I mentioned, deforestation, agriculture, invasive species, usually by humans and human related activities. But you also have like these migratory areas. So birds migrate, a lot of birds migrate really long distances. But during that migration, they need to stop over and rest and feed to get the energy to continue on with their long migrations. I'm gonna think in Canada because I'm in Canada, birds that migrate from the Arctic all the way down to the south of like say the United States, or even in Mexico. They have to stop over at certain areas and you know, they travel in wind tunnels because it's easier to travel when the wind is at your back and they land in those areas.

8:45 Well, when those areas are not available because of destruction practices or, you know, development or maybe even sometimes renewable energy areas that are impacted 'cause that's where the wind is. So they'll put windmills in there. That can impact a population if it's not designated in the right spot or located in the right spot. It becomes a big problem when we talk about migratory spaces. So the lack of migratory stopovers, tropical burns, losing forest. Like we are starting to see these areas be impacted and these birds be impacted. And now we're down to 61% of birds species you know, globally, that are declining. Not a good thing, You have a great success story in the sea turtles, like green sea turtles. You have a declining story with harp hooded and bearded seals in the Arctic because of lack of sea ice.

9:29 And then of course, 61% of species are declining globally . That's declining. That's not a good story. So although where you're gonna see a lot of highlights, you're gonna see a lot of people's talk about how green sea turtles have been, you know, sort of delisted to one category, which is great it is a testament to a lot of people working really, really hard, putting a lot of money and effort into those protections and making sure that the population has not only stabilized, but it's gotten bigger, which is great. We still have a lot of problems on this earth and so. You know, looking at the new IUCN red list of endangered species and how that's changed, that's great, but there's also been a lot of impact on more species, right? WWF Canada just released a report on a lot of the species within Canada that have been declining, a majority of them. So obviously that's not good.

10:10 So we're starting to see that. And a lot of it is human inflicted. A lot of it is because whether it's direct or indirect, it's loss of habitat, loss of sea ice, loss of resources. It's not really that great. In Ontario on land, the government is taking away from anything on the endangered species at risk list. And on the province, they're actually taking away the protections of the habitat of the species. So normally when you protect the species, you wanna protect their habitat. But no, they're not protecting the habitat. They're protecting where they get their food, but they're not protecting the habitat, where they live, where they nest, where they actually, you know, sit and be comfortable and be safe from predators and so forth. They don't wanna protect that. They're actually trying to change that law if they've not, haven't done it already. Governments that are changing these laws for development or changing these laws for whatever reason of oil and gas development, whatever that might be, we need to get those guys out of there, right?

10:58 We need to get those politicians out there. We need to put politicians that are making sense of like, Hey, you know what? We can actually be economically sound as well as environmentally sound like those two can go hand in hand. I think it's really important. Climate change, habitat loss, exploitation of human driven problems, those are things that we need to get in control. And to get into control, you need to make sure that we are doing our part. Go vote for environmentally focused politicians. Make sure that when you speak to the candidates that come around your area, be like, what are you doing for the environment? What are you actually doing for the environment? If they give you this bs, that climate change isn't here, or it's not true, or it's being overblown in the proportion, start to look at some of these reports. Show them some of these reports and be like, look, I'm seeing headlines all the time and it's not leftist news or extremist news, these are environmental reports by scientists who are paid to do the work that they do and understand the trends in populations and so forth.

11:50 If they don't understand that, if they can't understand or they try and spin it a different way, then that means they are corrupt. That means they don't care about the environment. You need to put in politicians that care about the environment, care about the economy too, but care about the environment for heaven's sake, like Christ. Like we gotta be able to do something. You're looking at declines as widespread, but recovery is possible, is something that we really need to focus on. You really need to understand that you, who's listening to this, you're not powerless. There's citizen science, there's policy advocacy. There's supporting organizations who are working with like animals, like green sea turtle populations and local communities that are actually doing it right to say, Hey, you know what? We want to increase the populations of these species 'cause we know that they're declining quite rapidly and we want to help.

12:34 Those are the organizations that help those communities or help bolster those populations in different ways by doing different studies, even academically, in academia, like the researchers and this graduate students, all the people who have put together ways to do restoration or make sure that we're increasing restoration. Like Project Seagrass, they're all good friends of mine, so I'm a little biased when it comes to that. But they've done a great thing to take a small organization and have a big impact and bring people together. Not to take credit for other people's work, but bring people together, identify what's missing within sort of the research industry and be like, Hey, we can put that together and we'll make sure we drive these types of projects as a collaborator. And I think that's just really great to see organizations like that.

13:15 And we should be supporting organizations who do restoration, focus on projects, focus on ways that we can collaborate with others. Put on symposiums. These are huge, huge things. So like the greener sea turtle survival wasn't an accident The resurgent in that survival wasn't an accident. It was a choice. It was a choice that we made to make sure, like as a collective. Not only just me as a scientist who's speaking out for them, but as the people who are on the ground, the people who are working with communities, those communities that are making changes in their lives to make sure that they're not poaching eggs and they're not eating sea turtle eggs or sea turtles. And they're starting to use sea turtles as a way of driving ecotourism or as a way of making sure that they're marine protected areas at certain times when sea turtles are there and that nobody harms them. They do their own sort of management enforcement and it's great to see So.

13:58 There's a lot of great things that come out, but we still have so many species that we need to save and we need to choose to save that. And the way we choose is to vote. Support organizations, policy advocacy is huge, and a change in consumption habits is even bigger. That's where we're gonna end it. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think it's a great thing? How do you think we should manage the other endangered species or even just ecosystems? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Let me know in the comments below. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you're listening to the audio on your favorite podcast app, which I love, by the way. That's how I started. you're always gonna get audio only from me. It's gonna be great. I'd like you to hit me up on Instagram, dm me at how to protect the ocean. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the episode. And of course you can also go to speak up for blue.com/contact to fill out the form.

14:41 Email me and let me know your thoughts. Love to hear it. That's it for today's episode. I wanna thank you so, so much. For supporting this podcast to the level that it has on YouTube. We've actually gotten to the first level of monetization, which opens up a lot of cool things that I'm working on right now to you know, continue with this community. I'm very much looking forward to it. I'm just looking through IT strategies right now. But I can't wait to reveal it for you. So that was you. That was because of you guys being able to listen, being able to subscribe, to watch each and every episode. It's really, really important to me, and that means a lot to me. So thank you very much for listening. You have been listening to this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, from the True Nor Strong and free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.