In celebration of Sea Turtle Week 2019, I’d like to bring awareness to others about this beautiful and majestic creature of the ocean. A few years ago, when I visited Mexico on vacation, I fell in love with the beautiful clear blue water of the ocean. This is also when I fell for sea turtles! I had seen photos of them swimming in the ocean, or videos on YouTube, but nothing compares to the awe you feel when you see one for real, in person. They are HUGE. The adults are massive. They can even get as large as a small car! The females come upon the beach at night to lay their eggs in a nest they make. The nest takes hours to dig and is essentially a very big hole. They dig it by moving their paddle-like flippers back and forth, tossing sand behind them. Once they lay their eggs, they go back into the ocean. Sea turtles are on the endangered list in Mexico, so they have people that work for the government all along the beaches that dig up the eggs and put them in a safe nursery that is surrounded by a fence. Once the eggs hatch, these personnel release them into the waters at night to prevent predator birds from eating the baby turtles. Sadly, only about 1 in 1,000 actually make it. The babies are tiny and fit in the palm of your hand. They use light on the horizon, which is usually the sun over the sea, to navigate towards the water. Lights at night such as cars, campfires, hotel beachfront lights, and flashlights can confuse the turtles and they might go in the wrong direction.
Once the sea turtles are out in the ocean, they feed on “molluscs and crustaceans, hydrozoans, sargassum sea weed, jellyfish, and fish eggs. Unfortunately, hatchlings also mistake garbage and objects like tar balls as food and ingest them.” (SEETURTLES.ORG, n.d.) Since plastic bags floating in the ocean look like jellyfish, sea turtles may ingest plastic bags. Plastic doesn’t digest and takes up room in the stomach that the turtle needs to fill with food. This can cause the animal to starve to death once enough plastic has accumulated in the stomach. We have also seen this horrible reality with marine birds mistaking bits of plastic and feeding it to their young, whales dying of starvation and washing up on the beaches, and other marine animals dying from plastic pollution.
Fishing nets are another source of danger for the sea turtles. Over 250,000 are caught in the nets per year, resulting in about 4600 deaths in the U.S. alone. These nets also contribute to deaths of albatross, dolphins, and other marine life that is not the intended target. They are discarded by the fishing vessel as garbage. It has been estimated that twenty pounds of marine life are wasted and killed for every one pound of target fish caught. To make matters even worse, there are many nets that are abandoned. This is a significant part of the plastic pollution problem in our oceans. About 460,000 tons are discarded in the ocean every year. These nets entangle, strangle, and drown our marine life. There are companies that give incentives to fishing companies to recycle their used fishing nets. There are also documentaries and other events to bring awareness to the plastic pollution problem. (worldoceanfest.org, 2017)
So what can you do as one person to help?
1. Refuse plastic bags. Bring your own or ask for paper that can be recycled or composted. If it’s just one or two items, you don’t even need a bag.
2. Stop using plastic produce bags. Just put the produce in your cart. You are going to wash it, anyway, so the plastic is a waste. Bring your own net or muslin produce bags. You can even make your own. You can purchase some here. (As an Amazon Affiliate, I do earn commission from these purchases. It helps to provide towards the cost of this website.)
3. Bring your own utensils to avoid plastic cutlery.
4. Use reusable coffee mugs and water bottles.
5. Refuse the straw. If you need one, consider purchasing a reusable one you can carry with you.
6. Pack in, Pack Out. This means what you brought with you to the beach, river, woods, or even your local park, take back with you and dispose of the garbage at home. Better yet, pack your own food in reusable containers to avoid single-use plastic.
To be successful at living plastic free, it takes a little planning in the beginning. Once you have all your changes in place, they become habit. Before you leave your house or your desk at work, and you know you will be eating out, bring your zero waste items with you. You may find it easier to just keep a set in the car in a small bag. When you are done unpacking groceries from your reusable bags, take those bags back to your car immediately and keep them in the trunk. This will prevent you from leaving them behind. You will have days where you forget to bring your coffee mug or you forget the produce bags. Just keep going and try better next time. Know that you have contributed to the solution and made a positive impact in what you have done so far.
References
SEETURTLES.ORG. (n.d.). Baby Sea Turtles. Retrieved from SeeTurtles.org: https://www.seeturtles.org/baby-turtles
worldoceanfest.org. (2017, June 9). THE IMPACT OF ABANDONED OCEAN FISHING NETS ON MARINE LIFE. Retrieved from World Ocean Fest: https://www.worldoceanfest.org/new-blog/2017/6/9/the-impact-of-abandoned-ocean-fishing-nets-on-marine-life
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