Even with conservation sea turtles face an existential threat
In his latest exclusive video from West Africa and the climate frontline, adventurer and environmentalist Ian Packham learns how Ghana is doing more to protect icons of marine life, but this may not be enough.
All five species of sea turtles that come to lay their eggs in Ghana are endangered. This is down to a deadly combination of poaching and climate change.
Long hunted for their meat, and poached for ornamental and medicinal purposes, as Environment Journal‘s Ian Packham discovers, more and more coastal communities are changing their relationship with the animal. Instead of seeing it as an abundant source of food, as they have for generations, and its shell as an in-demand luxury, they now appreciate that sea turtles don’t have to be killed to play an active role in the local economy.
Not only do turtles eat jellyfish, helping keep in check populations of a creature that feeds on the same species of seafoods fishermen rely on for their income, turtles also bring in significant tourist trade, especially during nesting season, roughly October to January. But sadly it’s within this timeless ritual of laying and burying eggs on beautiful beaches that a new threat is emerging, on that could potentially push species like the hawskbill, leatherback, and loggerhead to the brink of extinction thank to the way in which embryos are assigned a sex – a process that relies on stable and reliable climate conditions.
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