[00:00:00] Speaker A: June is the month to celebrate our oceans and the incredible creatures they support. This Sunday is World Sea Turtle Day, and we're joining the ocean Fund by revisiting conversations with two amazing conservationists. Brad Naheel, the executive director of Sea Turtles, and Christine Figgener, PhD, vice president and founder of Coasts.
Welcome to Rebodology, the nature podcast that explores the human side of conservation, conservation, travel, and rewilding the planet. I am your host, Brooke Mitchell, conservation biologist and adventure traveler.
Brad and Chris are sea turtle experts who have been working in this field for decades combined. Brad co founded Sea turtles in 2008 as the world's first effort to protect sea turtles through ecotourism. You know, I love that topic. Sea turtles is also a registered nonprofit that raises a substantial amount of money to continue sea turtle conservation efforts around the world. Chris is a sea turtle biologist who's been studying these fascinating creatures since 2007 and has spent many, many years working in Costa Rica trying to further understand and protect these animals. Both Brad and Chris are open, wonderful people who weren't afraid to explore all aspects of this field with me. The good, the bad, the informative, and the enlightening. After you're done listening to these snippets, be sure to dive into the archives and check out the full Costa Rica series, episodes 59 through 61. All right, fellow rewadologists, sit back, relax, and enjoy this fun episode with Brad and Christine.
First up, we've got Brad. In this part of our chat, Brad gives us the lowdown on all the different sea turtle species, their current conservation status, and the major threats they're facing.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: So worldwide, there are seven species of sea turtles. There's still a little bit of a debate.
The black turtle is considered by most people to be a subspecies of the green turtle. Some consider it to be an 8th. But the consensus at the moment is seven species of sea turtles around the world. They've been on the planet for more than 100 million years. I remember hearing about, I believe it was in Columbia. Fossil of 120 million year old ancestor of the current species that are around today. Yes. So, yeah, there's the green turtle, the hawksbill, leatherback, olive ridley, Kemp's ridley, loggerhead, and flatback. So those are all the species of sea turtles that you can find in the world conservation wise.
You know, the news isn't as bad as some people assume. And that's good. Yeah. Personally, I'm pretty optimistic about the future of sea turtles and them being around for a really long time. You know, there's always an assumption that anything related to the ocean is. Is bad news. I know Jay Nichols likes to tell a story that at one point, marine biologists was, like, the second least wanted job because.
Because it was so depressing, because all the news was. Was bad. But the efforts that had been done to protect sea turtles and to restore their populations going back. It's gone back, you know, over 100 years, but in a major way, all around the world has really gotten going in the past 60 or so years. And in that time, the majority of nesting beaches now have people there watching and protecting the turtles that are coming up and making sure that the hatchlings are getting into the water. There is some amazing research being done into fisheries and how to reduce the impact of fisheries on sea turtle conservation.
Fishing gear has improved in a lot of places. There's still a lot of problems with it, still a lot of. A lot of improvements that need to be made. I have a good friend named Jesse Sanko who's helped create this solar powered light that prevents sea turtles from getting caught in fishing nets that I think has extraordinary potential to save sea turtles around the world. So, long story short, most of the populations, the majority of populations of sea turtles around the world, so of the seven species, they were broken down into regional management units, which is kind of a complicated term for population. So a certain species in a certain place, the majority of them are growing.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: Oh, that's beautiful.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it was like two to one. I forget the exact numbers of it, but we're seeing recoveries of sea turtles in a whole bunch of places in tortugaro that I mentioned. Their nesting is up something like 500% in the 60 years that they've been running it.
The best example that I love to give is a project in Mexico in a place called colola. It's an amazing beach. This is the black turtles, the subspecies of the green turtle. So they used to get, you know, 70 or more thousand nests per year. But the green turtle is the most popular sea turtle to be eaten. It has the best tasting meat, according to people who eat turtle. And so they were the turtle that was part of, like, turtle soup, you know, that was such a popular dish all around the world. And so between the turtles getting collected to be shipped abroad and the eggs being eaten, their numbers had declined rapidly. So by the early eighties, some researchers from the University of Michuacan found this beach in this community, this indigenous community, the Nahua people on the Pacific coast of Mexico, a couple of hours north of, like, Ixtapa's Iwatanejo, that part of the coast when they started, they had a few thousand nests. And right around the same time, Mexico outlawed eating sea turtles.
They worked for 17 years. By 1999, the numbers had kept dropping. They had their lowest year ever. It was 500 nests, from 70,000 to 500.
So put yourself in that situation. Imagine working on a beach for 17 years, trying to work with the community, trying to protect as many eggs, get as many hatchings as you can in the water, and you're down to the point where they're almost gone. And that was right around the time when my colleague Jay Nichols was getting into his graduate research, and he wanted to work on this turtle. And he had advisors tell him, don't bother, they're too far gone. They're not. They're not coming back. Focus on something that there's more hope for.
And he didn't take that, you know, very seriously. He said, no, that makes me want to work with him even more. And so him and, you know, these researchers in Mexico, my good friend Carlos Delgado with the University of Michigan, has been working with this project from the start. And so, yeah, imagine 500 nests in 1999. But in 2000, they had 1000. 2001, they had maybe 1500. The numbers started growing and growing and growing. Now they're back up to almost 50,000 nests a day.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: That's amazing.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: It's one of the most. It's almost completely unknown. I try to talk about it as much as I can because it's one of the most inspiring wildlife recovery stories that I've ever heard.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:59] Speaker C: And I've never heard this either.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's very. I mean, not even a lot of sea turtle people know a lot about.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: And so, yeah, they went from 500 to nearly 50,000 in 20 years, which is a really amazing recovery, especially for, like, the sea turtle, where it takes so long to recover. But the hatchlings that they were protecting in the early eighties started coming back in the two thousands, and now the community is fully on board. The Nahua people are amazing. I've taken a couple of tour groups there who had amazing experiences. We were releasing thousands of hatchlings a night. We would just take baskets of them to the water from the hatchery and go back, oh, more hatchlings. Okay, let's go release more hatchlings. And so, you know, when the communities are involved and the people do the work for long enough, you start to see recoveries. And so that's not the only place we're seeing. Maybe not to that quite a scale, but we're seeing recoveries in the places that have been protecting the turtles long enough for those hatchlings to start returning as adults.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: So in all of that, what would.
[00:09:07] Speaker C: You say, then, is the biggest conservation issue or the biggest thing that turtles are facing? So they aren't fully recovered, obviously. So something's still happening. What is that something?
[00:09:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, fishing is still a big issue. A lot of turtles are still getting caught in fishing gear.
Illegal hunting is still pretty active in a lot of places, not nearly like you used to, but there's quite a few places where people are still eating turtles. The tortoise shell trade is still a major issue for the hawksbill sea turtle.
They are one of the two critically endangered species. So I didn't get into this in the previous one, but of the seven species, two are critically endangered, the hawksbill and the kemp's ridley. One is endangered, the green turtle. Three are vulnerable, which is the leatherback, the loggerhead and the olive ridley. And the flatback is listed as data deficient, which means that there just haven't been enough long term research to really gauge the size of the population and how it's growing or declining. But they are only found in Australia, and Australia considers them endangered, so they're probably endangered. So, yeah, there's those two issues and then there are the emerging issues. So, climate change, you know, sea turtles are not quite polar bear status when it comes to climate change, but they're right up there in terms of animals that are impacted by it. So rising sea levels are inundating nesting beaches.
Sea turtles, all reptiles are temperature dependent for their sex. So that means when a sea turtle lays an egg in the nest, the sex of that turtle is not yet determined. It's determined by how warm it is in the nest.
Ideally, you want to be right around that pivotal temperature, which, if I remember correctly, it's around 78 degrees warmer, will create females, cooler will create males. So you want to have a mix. Right.
But as beaches are getting hotter from climate change, we're seeing more and more beaches that are finding their hatchlings that are skewed. Female. There was a few years ago, a study in Australia where they took the gender. It's a bit of a complicated procedure. You can't look at a baby turtle and tell if it's male or female.
An adult turtle. You can, but not a hatchling.
But they did. They analyzed the gonads of a bunch of nests from one season at this beach in Australia, and they found out that 99% of them were female.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: 99.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: 99. And now, that's not the same at every beAch. And there are some measures that you can take. There's a lot of places that when they have hatcheries, which is a little section of beach that they'll block off on the sand, they can shade part of that so that they can try to control the temperature. But, yeah, it's a big problem. Yeah, that's a really big problem.
[00:12:10] Speaker C: It's a really big problem. There's a reason why, you know, the sexual reproduction system came about, and that.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Is how sea turtles repRoduce.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: We need males. I'm sure there's some females that are like, no, we don't.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: We do.
[00:12:22] Speaker C: We need males.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: There's a few of them.
[00:12:24] Speaker C: Yeah, 99%.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: That is nuts.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: Yeah, that was a really scary study. So I haven't seen that replicated on many other beaches. But I don't pay a ton of attention to the science because we focus on the conservation side.
Plastic sea turtles are probably the poster species for the ocean plastic crisis. Since the video came out of my good friend Christine Figuener in Costa Rica, where she took a video of a straw being taken out of a turtle's nose. I bet a bunch of your listeners have seen that. It's gone quite viral, has really helped ignite the effort to try to reduce plastic going into the ocean. And so sea turtles, they can eat plastic, they can fuse it for jellyfish, they can get caught in it, they can get stuck in it. Coming up onto nesting beaches to lay their eggs, or as hatchings, trying to get into the beaches. Microplastic is a really huge issue. I just reviewed a paper for a friend who is looking at levels of microplastic in nesting beaches. Because that plastic from the ocean, a lot of it gets broken down and then deposited on the beach in these tiny little particles. And those particles can actually interact with climate change because they can draw heat themselves, so they can make the sand even hotter than it is from climate change. And they also are not only toxic themselves, but they can attract other toxins, so they're super toxic. And so when you have a nest being laid in a beach that is full of microplanes, plastic, it's affecting the sea turtles in ways that we don't even know yet, because this research is really just starting to now happen. There are other issues building on beaches. Lighting on beaches are problems. People acting like idiots around sea turtles. So the sea turtle selfie thing has become pretty popular on Instagram, where people have their selfie sticks and they see a sea turtle in the water, and they put the stick in front of the turtle's face and they're touching it or they're getting in its way and stressing them out. That's a problem that we're seeing. Growing people sitting on turtles.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Sitting on turtles.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a.
Where did that happen? I know that it happened in Costa Rica. I think believe it happened in Trinidad. It's. People want these unique pictures for their social media, and they're not thinking about the animal, thinking about, hey, look how cool I am on this turtle. And so, yeah, we're seeing people acting in more stupid ways around these animals. Feeding them is a big problem. You don't want people feeding wild animals, any wild animals, including turtles. So there's a lot of issues that they're facing. But I think there's so many people working around the world and organizations that I still am hopeful that they will continue to grow and recover.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Next up is Christine. If you caught Brad's section, you'll know that Christine is the one who recorded and published that viral sea turtle straw video that went literally everywhere. I'm sure you've seen it. In the full episode, we chat about that pivotal moment in her career. But in this snippet, we dive into the ocean plastic crisis. And what we all can do to help save these amazing sea turtles is.
[00:15:48] Speaker C: Now the plastic crisis.
One of your big missions is, is that one of the big things you're working towards now? Or what would you say is your number one?
[00:16:01] Speaker D: Well, I mean, my number one is always sea turtles.
[00:16:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:05] Speaker D: Of what happens or what the issues for sea turtles are. I think that defines a little bit of where I'm concentrating on. But I have to say, naturally, the plastic pollution is definitely one of the fights that I have picked. I don't, you know, I hate when people try to play, and there's so many things that go wrong on our planet, in our oceans. It's not just one thing. It's a whole array of apocalyptical writers that have these incredible, horrible synergies. I mean, plastic pollution feeds directly into climate change for the reasons of how it is manufactured, of how it degrades, and all of that. But the thing is, though, you cannot work on all those issues. You know, you have to, you have to pick your fights. You only have, again, you only have a finite amount of time. You only have a finite amount of energy. So you need to decide, okay, where do you put your energies? And for me, just because of my story of my journey, it was plastic pollution. And also because it's something so tangible. And I also feel while it is something so horrible, it is also something that so many people can relate on an individual level and really feel like they can make a difference every single day of their lives.
[00:17:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:21] Speaker D: So that means even though you're stuck at home during a pandemic and I might not be able to come out and help me directly in Costa Rica, save sea turtles, but you can still make your, or do your bit from home. Right. That's. That's the beauty, I feel, with the plastic pollution issue, it's really a little bit in our hands still. I mean, it's also beyond manufacturers and politics and all of that. But again, we can vote. We can vote for politicians, we can also vote for manufacturers with our money. Right. So again, there's a certain empowerment of consumers.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: Right, right, absolutely. And just like you said, it's something that we can do, all of us can do. And why I think that video is so powerful in that sense where it's like somebody used that straw and that straw got into that sea turtle's nose because of that one person used that straw. And that could have been anybody.
[00:18:20] Speaker D: That could have been you, that could have been I. Because none of us say that we have never, ever used a plastic straw.
[00:18:27] Speaker C: Right. And so to see the consequences, like, very tangibly, to see the consequences was very impactful. And just even from that alone, I worked, the last company I worked for is called Natural Habitat Adventures. They're a fantastic conservation travel company, and they did everything possible to ban straws and as many destinations as possible. We went to every single continent and like that, just from that one, that one video and, yeah, anti straw movement. Let's go. Let's hop on the bandwagon. There's some really good bandwagons that can come from that. And then you could talk about plastic bags and all these other problems that you see in the ocean. So it's just amazing what that one video can do. Just that one.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: You use all this every day, like you said, like you're doing necropsies and.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: Like, all of these sea turtles were filled with plastic. And I guess what I would like to ask next on that, I mean, have you seen a difference?
Is it any better in our oceans from someone who's on the water every day with these animals? What's the update?
[00:19:34] Speaker D: What's the update? I would say, unfortunately, at this point, the plastic pollution is really a crisis and it's not getting better because we haven't managed to turn off the tap. Right. So this is the thing because, I mean, the important thing is, I mean, there's so many people that criticized this whole movement for, oh, straws are not the major problem. Well, it was never meant to be just about the straws, right. But if you can envision that a tiny object such as a straw can cause so much pain and suffering, can you envision how more and larger objects, what type of suffering they can cause? And this is full of it. I mean, our project just this season pulled off 630 plastic from the beach. And it's just one beach cleanup per week. Yeah, that's not even that much, but it's just so much. And it's right there and it's coming back. So we clean it up the next flood, so the next tide is going to, you know, pretty much makes it look as if we never went out to clean. So it's just. It's sissy for us. Right. Unless we have laws in place that incentivize big manufacturers to change something drastically about how they package their food, how they manufacture certain things. But we as consumers, also need to demand change, right? We need to create a different type of demand, a demand that is pretty much for products that do not contain plastic. And that is actually probably the positive where I feel, where I see the change is there are so many more options of plastic free products everywhere. I mean, here in Costa Rica, in Germany, in the US even. I mean, you can get everything in something else. I mean, you don't have to buy plastic anymore. You can buy it in glass, you can buy it in aluminium, you can buy it in paper, or you can buy it completely unpacked and bring your own containers. And I felt that did not exist in that extent maybe five or six years ago. And I feel it's increasing because people are becoming more aware. And especially, I would say, my generation, your generation, even the younger generation, we just don't mindlessly consume anymore. Right? So we really like to invest our money in companies that try to make it better. They might try to, you know, I mean, I don't blame people for wanting to make money, but you cannot make that on the cost of our livelihood on our planet, of the, you know, of killing animals, of devastating our environment, our air, our water. I think this is not okay anymore. And people have come to realize that. And I just hope that those products that are not, you know, made from plastic that contain pfas and all these really bad also for us, human health, really hazardous materials. I just hope that it doesn't stay a privilege because I feel it's still a privilege. A lot of times it's more expensive, and so people that, you know, economically not super well off, they still don't have the option to buy healthier options. Right. So they have to buy stuff in plastic. And so I just hope it becomes not a privileged thing anymore. I hope it becomes mainstream, because the big manufacturers. Right. If we talk Coca Cola and Nestle and all of those main polluters, really come to realize that the world is demanding a different kind of product.
[00:23:08] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And I do feel like there's a movement, too, just like you said, like, so many more companies are becoming so much more ego conscious. And, like, this sense where when you were saying that, I was immediately thinking about fast fashion, how our generation is pretty much like, sorry, H and M. Sorry, forever 21. I I don't support you. I will spend the extra money if I have it. I will save up the. Spend the extra money to get that really nice, like, that really nice product to support that company that I know has green practices. Or as I mostly do, I just buy secondhand from everybody else who's spent all their money on astronomical clothes. I'm like, thank you.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: I'm going to get that off of.
[00:23:51] Speaker C: The goodwill rack for $3, you know, and.
And I feel like it's way more acceptable. Like, that's no longer seen as.
Cause, I mean, when I was growing up, to have secondhand clothes was not a good thing, you know?
[00:24:06] Speaker A: No, it was.
[00:24:07] Speaker D: No, absolutely not. It was kind of looked down upon. You were poor. You were kind of.
[00:24:11] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:24:12] Speaker D: Yeah.
Luckily, my parents were always a little bit stingy, so we, like, we're wearing the clothes from, like, my male cousins a lot of times. So it was just like, I was never cool clothes wise, at least when I grew up, probably also in any other way. But, yeah, I think it becomes more invoked to be pro environment, you know, I think it's. I mean, I remember when I grew up also that I was collecting signatures against whaling. Everybody made fun of me. It's like, oh, yeah, Chris, the whales, right? The whales need your help. Ha ha ha. I don't think anybody would ever laugh at people nowadays.
[00:24:53] Speaker C: No.
[00:24:53] Speaker D: I see the young generation investing their time into environmental topics. They're actually cool, really popular kids. Right. And I think this is right, that it becomes, you know, that you kind of become the ass if you actually, you know, a polluter, and you're not very vogue in this sentence.
[00:25:12] Speaker C: When we chatted on the phone, you said that you, you really love applied science, which is one of the ways that you went down your path. And I'm also very action oriented because we can talk until we're blue in the face, but unless we don't have something concrete to do, then what's the point? So for anybody listening, or me or you or anyone else, what would you say is an actionable thing that we can do? What is maybe one or two tips that you and your eyes would really help with this problem?
[00:25:50] Speaker D: I mean, I always feel, again, like you have to pick your fights, right? I mean, I hate to advertise anything that's perfect. I mean, I don't think I'm perfect. And I really hate people that are sitting on such a high horse that it's so untangible. I mean, you can't reach them. You know, that it's too perfect. So I would just say that look around in your household and try to identify everything that you still consume. I mean, look at your, literally look at your waste bin and see how much waste you're creating and what that is mainly made from. Right? So if you have a lot of plastic items, where are those plastic items coming from? Is it your shampoo bottle? Is it your, I don't know, your guilty pleasures from your microwavable. Microwavable dinner meal or something like that? I mean, just pick maybe three items and say, you know what, I'm just going to look for more sustainable options. And what I actually did is I challenged myself in 2017, I think it was for one year, to pretty much cancel one more item, plastic item, out of my life. So I kind of looked around in my household and just said, okay, after I'm done using this, what else could I use that is not made from plastic? I mean, at that point, of course, I used already, like, you know, reusable water bottles. I already had a coffee mug to go. I definitely brought my own shopping bags, all of that. But it was more of, kind of like, what else am I creating consistently?
[00:27:19] Speaker C: Right?
[00:27:19] Speaker D: And so for me, as a woman, it was a lot of cosmetic, cosmetic products. So face cream, shampoo, conditioner, but also cleaning products, you know, in the house cleaning, then also the waste bin bags, you know, the big massive plastic bags that we put in our waste bins to hold our plastic trash.
So all of those things I decided, you know what, I can think of better ways and find better products that are not plastic. And most of them actually stayed with me. I mean, here in Costa Rica, it's sometimes a little bit more challenging to find certain things because we don't have a supermarket just around the corner, so we have to buy in bulk. And then again, we don't have stores where you can come with your own containers, or we actually have to, you know, it's really hot and humid, so things just don't stay fresh long enough for months if I don't have it wrapped in plastic. So that's sometimes a little bit disappointing. But I think we're still pretty good compared to other people, right? So I don't drink sodas, for example, unless I can find them in a glass bottle, those kind of things. Or I'm, I felt during the pandemic, one of my biggest challenges was actually looking at takeout food containers.
[00:28:37] Speaker C: Yes, me too.
[00:28:38] Speaker D: And finding restaurants that do not give plastic, but rather paper. And I just, once I knew who that was, I actually called them up and asked. I just kept on ordering with them. I was like, okay, cool. Like, what do you do? You get my money. And I think this is just how everybody should approach it, probably. I don't think there's, like a one fits all kind of recommendation. I just think, like, you know, kind of analyze where your plastic comes from and how much trash you create, plastic trash especially, and how you can find other solutions to that.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: All right, if you want to dive deeper into the amazing world of sea turtles, be sure to check out episode 59 with Brad and episode 61 with Christine in our archives. You won't want to miss those full conversations with these incredible conservationists. Thank you for joining me on this wild adventure today. I hope you've been inspired by the incredible stories, insights, and knowledge shared in this episode. To learn more about what you heard, be sure to check out the show
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[00:30:01] Speaker C: Mean the world to me.
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