Photo: NatašaStuper from Bristol, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
For a change of subject and viewpoint, this month’s Climate Matters is a guest article from a local veterinary surgeon, Dr. Harrison Watler MRCVS describing his work with a sea turtle charity.
You may think that sea turtles are not part of our local marine fauna, but ocean warming caused by climate change is making encounters with these animals a more likely occurrence, as Harrison relates. Over to you Harrison:
“I’m currently a small animal veterinary surgeon working in Thanet. Many of you reading this may have seen me with your pet. In my day to day role I see what you would expect, with dogs and cats making up the main part of my day, but recently I see more and more exotic species such as birds and reptiles.
In my holidays I go and help a sea turtle charity based in Cape Verde. There I help with any turtles that are in need of assistance whilst also providing advice on how to offer the best possible service for our sea turtle patients.
An ever-growing issue is the vast amount of plastic in our oceans. You only have to walk 100m down the beach to find a minimum of 10 pieces of plastic from fishing nets to bottles. I recently saw first hand the huge destruction this can have on our ocean life.
In Italy I have been involved in surgeries to remove fishing lines from turtles and also sadly having to amputate flippers as a result of entanglement. This is largely due to the fact that the turtles are swimming in the same Pelagic region as swordfish and so are victim to by-catch. However, not all of these are as a direct result of fishing; lots have been entangled in ghost nets or even made anorexic due to the ingestion of plastic material.
A recent case in Cape Verde involved a large adult female loggerhead who came to the beach to nest. However, as she started to nest all that came out of her was a mound of plastic, consisting of plastic bottles, parts of fishing nets and wrappers.
This is a very sad example of how discarded plastic in our oceans can have a huge impact on an individual. This then has a knock on effect on the wider population and puts greater pressure on their already endangered existence.
A recent study carried out by the team in the Turtle Foundation found that the coastline on Boa Vista had an average of 6,082 items of plastic per kilometre of coastline, with the amount of plastic then having a negative effect on the turtle hatchling success rate.
A lot of people may think that the issues Cape Verde is facing are far from home; we don’t get turtles on our beaches. However, we do have, especially in the southeast, extensive sand beaches covered in plastic waste that is starting to impact our own native marine life. The British Diver Marine Mammal rescue team have had many occasions where they have had to cut ghost nets off seals and also, in some cases, cut Frisbees from their necks.
More pertinently, we have recently had a spike in numbers of juvenile loggerheads washing up on the south coast. Not all, but many of these juveniles will have consumed plastic. They may also have been entangled in ghost nets and carried off by the currents into waters currently much too cold for them.
The public are making efforts to reduce plastic waste, in part due to increasing publicity surrounding the new buzzword of microplastics. Bags for Life, banning plastic straws and so on are small steps in the right direction, but we miss a lot of what could be done.
By making efforts to keep our beaches clean of plastic we not only have an impact on our native marine life but also much further afield.”
Dr. Harrison Watler MRCVS: Veterinary surgeon
Phil Shotton, Ramsgate Society Lead on Environment and Climate Change
