Relevance

This WebQuest promotes awareness, knowledge, and learning about the science and the steps that are being taken to ensure the survival of leatherback turtles. Why be concerned about leatherback turtles? The reason is clear. We are all globally connected, and our actions locally determine the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the land we live on, and consequently, leatherback turtles in other parts of the world.

Background

A Sea Turtles Perspective

Once we are born and go to the water, only we, the females ever touch the sand again. We return to the beaches every two to four years to lay our eggs. The male leatherback turtles wait in the water for us. The only time the males see the beach is when they hatch and crawl to the water. When we do nest, we return to the beach around seven times during the season to lay eggs every nine days or so before heading back out to the Pacific Ocean.
The whole process requires us to stay on the beach several hours. We dig shallow pits to be comfortable, and then with our back flippers, we dig holes approximately 75cm for our eggs.

Then we go into a trance like state. We forget the outside world and push out about 60-70 billiard ball sized eggs. It looks like we are crying, but they are not tears of sorrow. We are getting rid of salt that builds up in our bodies, a result of living in the salty ocean. Then we cover up our nest very carefully and fling sand with our big front flippers in all directions around the nest. We do this to confuse predators that want to take our eggs. Some of our eggs will never hatch. Only 50-60% of them will become little hatchlings after 60 days in the sand. Our hatchlings push out of their shells and scramble over each in a race towards the ocean. Usually they do this at night when it is cold and there are not as many predators.

Did you know that sand temperature helps to determine the ratio of males and females in our nests? Warmer sand produces more females and cooler sand produces more males. Sadly, only a handful of every 1,000 hatchlings survive to become a full-grown leatherback turtles.

When we are tiny hatchlings, no bigger than a palm of your hand, crabs, sea birds and fish are all out to eat us. We are survivors, we learned to fend for ourselves and trust our instincts while in the ocean. We grow as fast as we can so we can do our part to continue the cycle of life. We are not sure how old we are when we start laying eggs, maybe around 15 years old or so. We can live past 50 years, however, it is getting harder to survive in the oceans and on the beaches from all the human activity. We hope our hatchlings, and their hatchlings do well and are safe, but it’s a tough world out there these days and our future is uncertain.

Our population in the western pacific is one of the largest population of leatherback turtles remaining in the Pacific Ocean. We nest along the remote northwest coast of Papua on the island of New Guinea at Jamursba- Medi, a series of three beaches, and at Wermon about 30 km further east. Even though we have the largest population in the pacific ocean, we’ve still lost 90 percent of our population in the Pacific Ocean during last 10 years. Imagine if 90% of humans were expected to disappear over the next 10 years. That would be considered a crisis and unacceptable.