Sea Turtles News

All told, this was a pretty bleak year. The COVID-19 pandemic brought tragedy and confusion; fires razed parts of Australia, the Amazon, and the Western U.S.; and the world is…

Early on the morning of Sept. 16, 2018, an olive ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) hauled herself out of the ocean along a beach on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. Moving…

COLOMBO — Conservation experts in Sri Lanka have been left puzzled by a recent spate of marine turtle fatalities, where the animals’ bodies have washed ashore without any indications of…

When baby sea turtles hatch from their eggs, they skitter across the sand to the shoreline before disappearing into the open ocean. Many years later, by some remarkable feat, female…

Social distancing has become part of the routine for Liessi Calero and Darling Delgado, park rangers who protect turtles in Nicaragua, the only country in Central America that has not…

Turtles and tortoises in trouble  On the island of Madagascar, locked gates, razor-wire fences, and 24-hour armed guards protect one of the world’s rarest treasures. That treasure, worth roughly $50,000…

From high above, the blue sea looks like it’s speckled with tiny white dots. But a closer look reveals more: each dot is actually a sea turtle swimming toward the…

In 2018, something extraordinary happened in Phuket, Thailand. For the first time in five years, a leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) crept onto a local beach, dug a nest in the…

BUTUAN CITY, Philippines — Villagers in the southern Philippines taking part in an initiative to protect turtle nesting sites have recorded their most successful season in recent years, with nearly…

It was one of the worst environmental disasters the world has witnessed. Ten years ago, on April 20, 2010, the BP Deepwater Horizon exploratory rig exploded, killing 11 people and…

In late February, a three-legged turtle nicknamed Futura was released back into the sea by caregivers at the Sea Turtle Recovery Center of Brancaleone in Italy. Futura, a loggerhead sea…

MISAMIS ORIENTAL, Philippines — For hundreds of years, the lives of fisherfolk along the sleepy coastal villages in the town of Candiis in the Philippines’ Misamis Oriental province have been…

Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean famous for its turquoise waters, giant tortoises and wondrous birds, has extended protection to 400,000 square kilometers (154,000 square miles) of its seas,…

In late 2018, researchers announced that they had found synthetic particles like microplastics in the intestinal tracts of every single sea turtle they’d studied in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans…

MANILA — Governments across Southeast Asia have vowed to strengthen cooperation in curbing the illegal wildlife trade, suspected to have sparked the novel coronavirus epidemic. The issue will be at…

DAVAO, Philippines – On August 4, 2018, a fisherman found an endangered green turtle (Chelonia mydas) floating weakly in the Davao Gulf, a diverse marine ecosystem and rich fishing ground spanning 308,000…

In myths and carvings, sea turtles are reverent creatures, carrying wisdom and worlds on their backs. In Hindu cosmology, the earth is supported by four elephants on the back of…

COLOMBO — The Sri Lankan Navy has rescued 32 sea turtles that were likely being reared for their flesh, highlighting just one of the key threats to turtles migrating through…

Around 400 people spread out across the coastline of a beach in the Lekki neighborhood of Nigeria’s commercial city, Lagos. Hands in gloves and some faces partly covered by disposable…

TAPULAGA, Indonesia — Over the past several years, Bakring, 56, has bought more than 20 live sea turtles. According to the law, each of these transactions could earn him five…

This is the second article in our six-part series “Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway.” Read Part One. TELOK SERABANG, Malaysia — At the westernmost tip of Borneo sits a dense…

Earth’s oceans are drowning in plastic. Humans created 311 million metric tons of the stuff in 2014, and it is expected that we’ll be making four times as much by…

In a remote spot in the South Atlantic, roughly 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the coast of West Africa, lies Ascension Island, one of the U.K.’s Overseas Territories. In January…

WATAMU, Kenya — One Saturday mid-morning in late January, close to 100 people descended on the narrow streets of Watamu village along Kenya’s north coast to clean up the streets.…

A new marine protected area (MPA) has been founded in the Philippines within what are considered some of the most biologically diverse waters on Earth. The new MPA, which has…

Some 2,000 sea turtle nests were raided and at least six turtles killed in La Flor Wildlife Refuge on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast during the summer of 2018, according to a…

New research published in the journal PLoS ONE this month finds that the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) is effectively aiding in the recovery of beleaguered populations of marine mammals…

You can now speak into your mobile phone and have it produce written text. Then have Google translate your words into Japanese, or Hindi. In two seconds. These examples of…

After months of fasting as she traveled hundreds of kilometers across the ocean, a female loggerhead sea turtle hauls herself up onto the sand: the shoreline she has returned to…

A recent study found microplastics in the intestines of humans around the globe, and new research has now done the same for sea turtles. Researchers at the UK’s University of…