NEWS
EPAA REPORTS HIGH LEVELS OF MARINE DEBRIS
IN FOUR SPECIES OF SEA TURTLES IN SHARJAH
EPAA researchers responding to stranded turtle.
In the past few decades, we observed an ever increasing interest by the scientific community, policy makers and the wider public on the creeping and growing threat of plastics and other anthropogenic waste in the marine environment. It was estimated that approximately 275 million metric tons of plastic waste were produced in around 200 coastal countries, and that roughly 4.8 to 12.7 million tons of that waste are entering the ocean. A later estimate suggested that, in 2015 alone, 144 million tons of single-use plastic products were produced (approximate equivalent to the weight of 20.5 million African elephants), while a mere 9% of global plastic waste has been recycled. When exposed to natural environments, plastics undergo weathering and degradation into fragments or microplastics, increasing their dispersal into different marine environments. Today, plastics and other forms of anthropogenic marine debris occur in every reservoir of freshwater and marine habitat in the world. Consequently, sea turtles are exposed to harmful interactions with marine debris through all of their life stages. Beached marine debris, also known as beach 10
DIVERS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT | DECEMBER 2021
litter, can act as a barrier for gravid (pregnant) sea turtles crawling onto nesting beaches. This forces these turtles to spend additional energy and time through the nesting process, thereby increasing their exposure and risk to predators. Hatchlings are also subject to entanglement or entrapment in beach litter. Marine debris also has significant impacts on the habitats that marine turtles depend on through the introduction of harmful non-native species which hitch-hike onto floating marine debris. Marine debris also causes direct damage to corals, sea grass and other marine habitats that turtles depend on. Still, through all of their life stages, marine turtles are primarily threatened by the risks associated with ingesting or being entangled by marine debris. In two recent studies published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin titled “Junk Food: Interspecific and Intraspecific Distinctions in Marine Debris Ingestion by Marine Turtles” and “Junk Food: A Preliminary Analysis of Ingested Marine Debris by Hawksbill Eretmochelys imbricata and Olive Ridley Lepidochelys olivacea Sea Turtles (Testudines: Cheloniidae) from the eastern
coast of the United Arab Emirates”, the Environment and Protected Areas Authority (EPAA) investigate the ingestion of marine debris by four species of sea turtles from the Gulf of Oman coast of the UAE.This was done through the investigation of the gut contents of the dead, stranded sea turtles as part of the activities of the EPAA’s Sharjah Strandings Response Programme (SSRP). This included the sampling of 36 green, 14 loggerhead, 7 olive ridley and 6 hawksbill sea turtles from the coasts of Kalba and Khor Fakkan. Marine debris were detected in 83.3% of hawksbills, 75% of greens, 57.1% of loggerheads and 28.6% of olive ridley sea turtles. To put these numbers into context, a previous similar study from the same area conducted in the late 1970s by Dr John Perran Ross found no evidence of marine debris ingestion in green sea turtles from Oman. This suggests a drastic and rapid increase in debris ingestion by marine turtles in the region. The reported high frequency of marine debris ingestion by hawksbill sea turtles examined in these studies is consistent with the literature which suggests that the omnivorous hawksbill sea turtles
