Protecting Leatherbacks Across the Globe

Protecting Leatherbacks Across the Globe

0:00:01.1 S1: Leatherback sea turtles are fascinating. First of all, they're huge, the largest turtle in fact. Adults can be six feet long and weigh half a ton, and they're the only species of sea turtle to lack scales and a hard shell. They're also endangered, and Western Pacific leatherbacks are among the most at risk.

0:00:18.2 S2: The population's declined, what's estimated to be about more than 80% since the 1980s and some nesting colonies have disappeared altogether. For example, in 1953 there were an estimated 10,000 nests laid in the nation of Malaysia, and only one to two nests have been documented annually since 2003.

0:00:38.9 S1: Those are grim statistics, but.

0:00:40.2 S2: We fortunately still have time to recover the population, and some of the recent conservation achievements that both NOAA and US Fish and Wildlife Service have been promoting and supporting provide some real hope.

0:00:52.2 S1: This is Dive In with NOAA Fisheries, I'm John Sheehan, and today we'll hear about some of those efforts to recover the Western Pacific also known as the Indo-Pacific leatherback sea turtle. Their recovery is a priority for NOAA Fisheries as mandated under the Endangered Species Act, and Pacific leatherbacks are a NOAA Fisheries “Species in the Spotlight,” one of nine species considered the most at risk of extinction. But for a highly migratory species that pays no heed to international boundaries, those recovery efforts are complicated and require a lot of coordination and partnerships.

0:01:17.0 S3: More than 75% of all nesting for this population nests in Indonesia, mainly two beaches in Jamursba Medi and Wermon.

0:01:28.2 S2: Yeah, and there are also other important nesting colonies in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. This population of leatherbacks can actually undertake really massive migrations, often venturing across the entire Pacific Ocean and into United States waters.

0:01:42.6 S1: These are my guests, Dr. Alexander Gaos and Ann Marie Lauritsen. Alex is a NOAA Fisheries research biologist with the Marine Turtle Biology and Assessment Program at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, and Ann Marie is program officer for the Marine Turtle Conservation Program in International Affairs at US Fish and Wildlife Service. And just their titles illustrate another challenge with leatherbacks, namely that two US agencies share responsibility for them.

0:02:10.0 S3: Under the Endangered Species Act, NOAA Fisheries has the responsibility for sea turtles in the water, and US Fish and Wildlife Service, we have the responsibility when they are on the nesting beach. We have a very close partnership to make sure that we're addressing the threats in the water because many times the threats that are in the water are also affecting and causing strandings of turtles that come on to the beach. We have to have a constant communication, both domestically and internationally.

0:02:44.4 S2: Sea turtles are quite unique in that they spend the majority of their lives at sea, but also emerge onto the land to nest. And for NOAA to assess, for example, the Indo-Pacific leatherback population, we need to know how many nesting turtles there are. So we're gonna work with partners in parallel to efforts that US Fish and Wildlife is doing to make sure that that data is being generated.

0:03:07.6 S1: So NOAA Fisheries and US Fish and Wildlife collaborate and coordinate recovery efforts, among themselves and with other countries that host the leatherbacks' nesting beaches.

0:03:19.1 S2: For us, particularly here at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, we're really driven by having the data on nesting and threats. And so to get that data, you have to work with international partners to be able to have feet on the ground and people actually observing and collecting data. And we're not, as a US agency, not only do we not have the personnel to be able to cover all those areas, but it wouldn't be appropriate. We're in different countries. And so finding partners that are reliable, that are going to go out and do quality work is something that I think both NOAA and US Fish and Wildlife is really relying upon. And fortunately, we've been able to team up with some really good partners over the last couple of decades, actually, and have some really great conservation achievements.

0:04:03.7 S1: So what are the other big threats to the western Pacific leatherbacks?

0:04:08.0 S3: Yeah, well, these beaches are highly erosive beaches with increasing erosion, nests are loss. And then of course, we continue to address threats that would cause them to not hatch out to make it to the water. Dogs on the beach, feral pigs on the beach, over exploitation.

0:04:29.1 S1: Yeah, among the primary threats to the population include the illegal and unsustainable harvest of leatherback eggs. And the issue there is that when you do that, there aren't enough baby turtles that will hatch and grow to adulthood to take over when the older backs pass away. And in some areas, egg and hatching predation is not only by humans, but it's by the predators that Ann Marie mentioned as well, dogs, spores, and even rats in some cases. Female leatherbacks are also vulnerable to direct harvest when they come on the beaches to nest because their meat is consumed in many countries.

0:05:02.0 S2: They can be hunted when they come out to nest and when they're foraging the area. And this is real concerning because when you kill an adult female, whether she comes out to nest or you kill her in the water, that female is laying multiple clutches every season and does that every two or three years. So when you kill that female, you're destroying and wiping out that entire reproductive potential which is key to help recover the species now to make the hatchlings that then are going to help that species recover. And another issue is fisheries interactions is a major threat to leatherbacks, gillnets in near shore waters and long lines out. And these commercial fleets on the open ocean can lead to incidental capture of leatherbacks and that can often lead to death.

0:05:46.3 S1: And and while not a threat, something specific to sea turtles is just how long it takes them to reach maturity. So it can take a while to see the effects of even immediate conservation.

0:05:58.1 S2: Absolutely, John. Just to think about for a leatherback turtle to grow from when it's a little tiny hatchling all the way to an adult can take 15 to 25 years somewhere in that realm, so they have to survive all these threats. They have to make it all this time so that they can actually make it to the adulthood and actually start laying eggs and start helping the population recover. So not only is conservation a long term endeavor, but also what can happen is if we're harvesting eggs for many, many years, we're still seeing the females laying eggs, laying eggs, but then when those females die, there are no hatchlings or young juveniles in the pipeline, so to speak, to kind of take over their place. And so that's when you see these populations real kind of fall off a cliff and you see these crashes. So it inevitably it is this long maturation period of sea turtles is a challenge and makes it hard to see our our day to day advances. And that's why you have to think about sea turtle conservation as a really long term endeavor.

0:06:57.6 S1: Yeah. And let's talk about some of those achievements that are being that are being made possible through these these partnerships. What are your efforts on nesting beaches to prevent some of those mortalities that you refer to?

0:07:11.1 S2: No conservation effort is going to work if you're not directly engaging the local community and having them work on your side whether they're protecting leatherback nests, ensure they're not getting poached by humans or predated by animals or trying to reduce the amount of turtles they're taking for consumption. Whatever it may be, you have to have community buy in. Typically, certainly for all the Western Pacific leatherback nesting beaches and even in water sites where we work, these are economically challenged communities.

0:07:40.3 S2: The eggs and meat represent a really important food resource for them. And so you have to be able to engage them and show them that you understand as a human being their challenges, relate to them and be able to help them find another way. And I think part of that is education. So we have a lot of the youth today, they say three turtles in a night come up and they think that's normal. And so they continue to hunt them. But when you talk to the elders, the elders will talk about 50 years ago, there were 30 turtles a night coming up and now it's two or three if you're lucky. And so really conveying that to the youth and and having people talk about leatherbacks and the issues facing them is a really big part of that engagement.

0:08:22.7 S2: So you're bringing alternative livelihoods and making them aware of the reality facing the situation. Then when they become aware and they find that there is some type of alternative or some other way to feed themselves or their families, they're more than happy to do it. And in fact, they can be really excited about it and they can they can generate a lot of pride. And so I know and in Indonesia, we work in the Maluku region with WWF Indonesia and WWF US at the site on Buru Island and another site in the Kai Islands where there is actually a traditional hunt.

0:08:53.1 S2: We've worked in the Solomon Islands with the Nature Conservancy and they have a really, good both of those organizations work real closely with the local governments. And it's definitely throughout those areas. It's working hand in hand with the community members and getting them to really buy in to the conservation efforts. And what that's done is it started when these countries and these project sites have understood the importance of their specific beaches for the species, it creates this real big sense of pride. Then there's like tourism interests in a lot of areas, and that's actually proliferated up government chain, if you will, now to the provinces. And now it's even within the countries. The leatherback is this big symbol and people are kind of putting up a flag and our country and our beaches are really important for this really enigmatic, charismatic species. And that's helping the entire effort...

0:09:48.3 S3: I'd like to highlight a few of the projects that we have, for instance, in the Papua University, UNIPA. They work very closely on the two main beaches at Jamursba Medi and Wermon in Indonesia. They work with the communities there to protect nests. So with that, there is that direct monitoring of the nests which is critical to know how nesting trends are going over the years. It's a concerted effort to build trust within the community by working with the community on solutions and needs that the community has. So there could be an alternate livelihood. One of the efforts that came up was that children need a little bit more help with their education or with reading. And so that's part of the building the trust and really building up conservation champions in the community.

0:10:45.0 S1: In reference to those community champions, it's not transactional, right? It's not like, "We'll watch the kids, but you've got to go and count the turtles." You're talking about creating these outreach programs and community support programs to foster relationships in communities so that they'll want to help.

0:11:05.3 S3: Exactly. It's not transactional. It's a way... It's a partnership, collaboration, a way to build trust to understand the needs of the community, but also involve the community in the conservation effort. So they are part of the nest monitoring. They're part of the nest protection. They are not just learning about the conservation of leatherbacks, but the threats that are associated with leatherbacks and this population and what they can do to protect leatherbacks.

0:11:37.9 S1: And Alex, I want to highlight that one example you gave of this traditional hunt that had been happening in the Kai Islands where the community was hunting them in near shore waters. And through your efforts, you've been able to pull that back, even though it was sort of this traditional ceremonial thing.

0:11:56.0 S2: Yeah. And that's a really complex situation. And you're dealing with tradition. One of the key players in that is his name's Hero. No pun intended, but he really is a hero. One of the most important things is to engage the respected leaders within these communities. A lot of Indonesia and Solomon Islands, they still are under a chief system. So while there is the government, there's also a more local chief system where you're... It's like a parallel government, if you will. And so you have to engage government leaders. You have to engage chief leaders. There's also, these are very religious areas, oftentimes, with multiple religions. So you have, it's really wise to engage these religious leaders and then working with them to try to lower the amount of, say, in this cultural hunt, "Can we reduce that impact?" Because what was seen in recent years were that a lot of the individuals, and especially the youth in these communities, were starting to lose the traditional aspect and they were just going out for the hunt.

0:12:55.4 S2: It's fun. They're young men, they're energetic, they want to go out and hunt. So when you come to them and then you share these elder stories about how there used to be a lot more and you make them aware of the situation facing leatherbacks and you have the pressure from these leaders within the community that are saying, "Hey, we should be doing this only for traditional reasons" then that lowers the take of leatherbacks and it's down 85% in the last five years, which is great. And this is, again, when they're hunting, they're typically hunting these adult turtles and oftentimes it's the females and so they have this extra value of conservation value.

0:13:32.4 S1: Can you talk a little bit more about how to sort of change habits and to change maybe traditions that started out as a subsistence gathering of food or the traditional hunts and that have sort of outgrown their usefulness and have actually started causing harm. How do you change these community habits?

0:13:53.3 S2: Yeah, well, it's interesting in the Kai islands where they traditionally have hunted the foraging leatherbacks, the leatherbacks while they're swimming, it used to be this practice that was done with old dugout canoes and they were, a couple of villagers would get in this canoe and they'd paddle out 17 kilometers over the course of several hours. And what they'd actually do is they would harpoon the leatherback and then they'd actually sink their canoe, bring the leatherback over the top of the canoe and then bail the water out of the canoe so that it rose back out of the ocean and they could paddle it back. So you can imagine doing that multiple times in a year, you're going to be limited, maybe you take a few leatherbacks and that's going to be it because it's so difficult with the advent of spear guns and outboard motors and fiberglass boats that has completely changed the dynamic.

0:14:38.5 S2: Now one can get out there much faster, you can harvest animals quickly, you can drag them back with your strong outboard motor. And so I think that is part of that awareness and the elders really getting on and the respected people in the community pointing those things out and saying," Hey look, there are a lot less leatherbacks than there used to be, we're over harvesting, we're doing it in an unsustainable fashion. So we need to revert or we need to start really regulating how many of these animals we're actually taking." And there's actually something similar on some of the nesting beaches.

0:15:08.2 S2: So when we were just our last trip, when we were on Buru Island, we were chatting with a bunch of elders and they were talking about how back in the early '80s, there was these harvesters that would come over from another island nearby that has a big city called Ambon and they'd come over and they'd actually, during the peak of the nesting season, they would just harvest every single female leatherback they could. So over the course of two or three months, they would harvest a couple of hundred leatherbacks. And so you can imagine the impact of those historical takes and harvesting, unsustainable harvesting, how that's now snowballed and led to some of the situations we're facing now. And now we're trying to rebuild those populations back to what they once were.

0:15:49.1 S1: And a lot of these efforts, some of them are direct conservation efforts where it's taking actions to physically prevent turtle mortality. But some of these are actions for research. It's data collection so that that can inform your conservation efforts moving forward. Can you talk about that?

0:16:09.3 S2: Sure. The enumerators or the local monitors out there, they're collecting this information on the number of females and the number of nests being laid each season. And that's the key for us to assess the population. In addition to that, these local teams, what they often do is they collect a really tiny skin sample from the leatherbacks and that can be used for things like genetic analysis and stable isotope analysis. For example, genetic analysis can understand how related the populations are. Say, is the nesting population in Solomon Islands the same population as the one in Indonesia. And no, we know from the samples that have been collected that genetically the more contemporary research is showing that there is actually genetic separation. So in addition to this geographic separation, there's genetic separation. And that means that then we might have to manage these populations independently because they're not mixing on timeframes that are relevant to conservation managers.

0:17:03.2 S2: Another thing we do is deploying satellite tags. And this is something we've done in the Solomon Islands and in the areas where US Fish and Wildlife Service is working. And they'll allow us to see where the actual leatherbacks are moving. That information is really key. And so for example, we've deployed some satellite tags on nesting females in Buru Island and they've remained in that area. And so now the government of Indonesia is actually creating a marine protected area right out in front of the nesting beach so that when they're in what's known as the internesting period, so that's the time while they're depositing multiple clutches of eggs before they go off on their migration, they're going to be protected in that area. And so that satellite telemetry is another key aspect, the type of research that can be done on these nesting beaches.

0:17:44.5 S3: Yeah. And I would like to add on some beaches, including data loggers, temperature data loggers and nest helps inform us and the community on the effects of climate change by whether the temperatures are increasing so much so that you have a higher or lethal temperatures for those hatchlings. We try to piece together the information on how the temperatures in the beach are increasing and how that is affecting hatchling production.

0:18:15.3 S2: That's a really good point by Ann Marie. And not only do high temperatures lead to mortality of nests, but sea turtles are also, they have temperature dependent sex determination. And so the temperature of the nest, if it's a warmer nest, it'll create primarily females. And if it's a cooler nest around a certain what's known as a pivotal temperature, it'll produce primarily male turtles. And so with those increases in temperature that Ann Marie reference, we're also seeing more biased female biased populations. And we're, we're still trying to understand what that means for these populations.

0:18:47.8 S1: Yeah. And let's talk about how these efforts have been really pretty successful. You've had a lot of positive results from your work.

0:18:58.9 S3: Yeah. We can look to the involvement of the community, some increases in nesting, how we have reduced the threats as a way to show our success and not just our success, but primarily the success of our partners in, in conducting these projects.

0:19:25.5 S2: Yeah. And throughout the beaches where the projects are running and that we've supported and that are run by the local groups, we've seen drastic reductions in egg poaching. I know that on the Buru site, they've gotten to the point now where they... So what traditionally happens a lot of times is to protect the nests, they're actually moving them to a protected area, what's known as a hatchery in some cases. In Buru, they've been able to avoid that altogether. So they're leaving the nests in their natural area and the community has bought in so strongly that they can leave them there and they still don't get poached. And so poaching in many of the cases in Buru, for example, was hovering around 65, 70% of all the nests. And now it's down to less than 1% of the nests. The hunting of the leatherbacks in Kai islands has been reduced by 85% and those are just really good conservation metrics.

0:20:13.3 S1: Absolutely. And as we stated at the top, these sea turtles have been in decline for decades and it can be characterized as a dire situation. But Alex, I think you've also called it hopeful.

0:20:26.4 S2: Well, absolutely. And I think there is a certain amount of trepidation when you hear about the historical numbers, but then when you see the hope in people and you see their willingness and you create those relationships we spoke about, and you realize that these people they want to protect the turtles as much as you do. And that just really, all the achievements both agencies have supported really just highlights the potential to get these populations back to a healthy level and let them fulfill the ecological roles that they were evolved to undertake. And that in the end means healthy oceans. It means a better future for all of us and that does make me optimistic.

0:21:06.3 S3: Yeah, I agree with Alex and echo his optimism. There are a lot of people that have come together to protect and conserve this population of leatherbacks and it takes time. It's hard work. But the solutions driven by the community and different stakeholders involvement, it does give optimism that we can conserve and recover this population.

0:21:32.1 S1: Ann Marie Lauritsen and Dr. Alexander Gaos. Thanks so much.

0:21:36.6 S3: Thank you for having us, John. Appreciate it.

0:21:39.2 S2: Thank you so much, John.

0:21:42.9 S1: Dr. Alexander Gaos and Ann Marie Lauritsen. Alex is a NOAA Fisheries Research Biologist with the Marine Turtle Biology and Assessment Program at the Pacific Islands Fishery Science Center. Ann Marie is Program Officer for the Marine Turtle Conservation Program in International Affairs at US Fish and Wildlife Service. To learn more about their efforts and those of their many international partners including conservation funds and more, visit fisheries.noaa.gov or fws.gov. Keep up with the latest news by signing up for one of our newsletters and check back with us for more podcast episodes. I'm John Sheehan, and this has been Dive In with NOAA Fisheries.