...First, I decided to do some research on the conservation status of Sea Turtles. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the global statuses are classified as followed: • Leatherbacks: Vulnerable • Greens: Endangered • Loggerheads: Endangered • Hawksbills: Critically Endangered • Olive Ridleys: Vulnerable • Kemp’s Ridleys: Critically Endangered Sea Turtles are among the list of top endangered species. Of the seven species, six are considered endangered. Among those six species are the Green Sea Turtles. Several factors have contributed to their rate of extinction. These factors include: climate change, oil spills, unmanaged coastal development, illegal trade, human consumption, and predators. According to the WorldWildlife webpage, “Incidental capture by fishing gear is the greatest threat to most sea turtles, especially endangered loggerheads, greens and leatherbacks. This threat is increasing as fishing activity expands” (wwf.org). Upon my research, I found another surprising factor that is currently contributing to sea turtle extinction. I discovered the article, “Invasive algae, pollution cause lethal tumors on sea turtles”. The lethal tumors have been most prevalent in Hawaii’s Green Sea Turtle Species. The tumors are linked to the invasive algae, “Superweed”. The algae grow along an area, where nutrient pollution is not managed regularly. When the sea turtles consume the invasive algae, the amino acids from the algae stimulate...
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...The biology of the sea turtle and facors affecting its population Upon first sight of the great sea turtle it might just think that it is like any other turtle. The truth is that marine turtles are beautiful creatures spending a majority of their lives wandering endlessly through our massive ocean. These reptiles have the ability to do amazing things. Some of these things include evolving to a range of purely innate responses to the demands of a changing suite of environments and having remarkable navigations skills for their excursions that may last up to several years. Sea turtles have been in existence for more than 100 million years and researchers have been studying them for great deal of time. During the past 20 years however, the natural history of marine turtles has received growing attention and much has been learned (Bjorndal 19). Instantly you will fall in love with their beauty and majestic way of life. The biology behind these amazing animals causes them stand out from much of the ocean life. There are seven different species of sea turtles. These species include Kemps Ridley, Flatback, Loggerhead, Olive Ridley, Leatherback, Hawksbill, and the Hawaiian Green Turtle (Gardner 2004). Unlike many animals the female sea turtle is generally larger than the males. The main distinction between the two is that the male tends to have a longer tail. The core part of the sea turtle and the part that helps protect them from predators is the shell. The shell grows around the...
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...maintain the health of ecosystems while human activity is able to have adverse impacts on both organisms and ecosystems. Sea turtle also plays key role in the sea ecosystem. This essay will indicate the important roles of sea turtles on two sea ecosystem, beaches and marine systems, and negative effects of human activity on the turtle and sea ecosystem. Sea turtles have played vital roles in maintaining the health of the world’s oceans for more than 100 million years. According to Ruckdeschel and Shoop (2006, p.2), there are seven species of sea turtles in the world’s oceans, including flatback, green, hawksbill, Kemp’s ridley, leatherback, loggerhea and olive ridley. The roles of those species consist of maintaining healthy seagrass beds and coralreefs, providing habitat for other marine life, helping to balance marine food webs and facilitating nutrient cycling from water to land. To more specific, there is an influence of sea turtles on seagrass beds. Sea turtles, especially green sea turtles, is an animal eating seagrass. This action of the turtles assist in maintaining the health of the sea grass beds because sea grass needs to be constantly cut short to be healthy and help it grow across the sea floor. Wilson, Miller, Allison & Magliocca. (n.d.). Sea turtles also bring some benefits to Beach Dunes. Sea Turtle Conservancy (2014) has claimed that turtle eggs provide dune plants with the nutrients, which makes dune planes grow up and become stronger. These vital nutrients...
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...The Effects of Plastic Bags on Environmentt * | * The effects of plastic bags on the environment are really quite devastating. While there are many objections to the banning of plastic bags based solely on their convenience, the damage to the environment needs to be controlled. * There is no way to strictly limit the effects of plastic bags on the environment because there is no disposal method that will really help eliminate the problem. While reusing them is the first step, most people either don't or can't based on store policies. They are not durable enough to stand up to numerous trips to the store so often the best that citizens can do is reuse them when following pooper scooper laws. * The biggest problem with this is that once they have been soiled the end up in the trash, which then ends up in the landfill or burned. Either solution is very poor for the environment. Burning emits toxic gases that harm the atmosphere and increase the level of VOCs in the air while landfills hold them indefinitely as part of the plastic waste problem throughout the globe. * Plastic Bag Litter * Even when citizens try to manage their plastic bag disposal wind plays a role in carrying them away as litter. This litter is not biodegradable and thus where it lands it tends to stay for long period of time. A bag that is eventually ripped to shreds from high winds or other factors doesn't disappear but instead is spread in smaller amounts throughout the area. This can cause...
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...500 extraordinary islands G R E E N L A N D Beaufort Sea Baffin Bay vi Da i tra sS t a nm De it Stra rk Hudson Bay Gulf of Alaska Vancouver Portland C A N A D A Calgary Winnipeg Newfoundland Quebec Minneapolis UNITED STATES San Francisco Los Angeles San Diego Phoenix Dallas Ottawa Montreal ChicagoDetroitToronto Boston New York OF AMERICA Philadelphia Washington DC St. Louis Atlanta New Orleans Houston Monterrey NORTH AT L A N T I C OCEAN MEXICO Guadalajara Mexico City Gulf of Mexico Miami Havana CUBA GUATEMALA HONDURAS b e a n Sea EL SALVADOR NICARAGUA Managua BAHAMAS DOMINICAN REPUBLIC JAMAICA San Juan HAITI BELIZE C a r PUERTO RICO ib TRINIDAD & Caracas N TOBAGO A COSTA RICA IA M PANAMA VENEZUELA UYANRINA H GU C U G Medellín A PAC I F I C OCEAN Galapagos Islands COLOMBIA ECUADOR Bogotá Cali S FR EN Belém Recife Lima BR A Z I L PERU La Paz Brasélia Salvador Belo Horizonte Rio de Janeiro ~ Sao Paulo BOLIVIA PARAGUAY CHILE Cordoba Santiago Pôrto Alegre URUGUAY Montevideo Buenos Aires ARGENTINA FALKLAND/MALVINAS ISLANDS South Georgia extraordinary islands 1st Edition 500 By Julie Duchaine, Holly Hughes, Alexis Lipsitz Flippin, and Sylvie Murphy Contents Chapter 1 Beachcomber Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Aquatic Playgrounds 2 Island Hopping the Turks & Caicos: Barefoot Luxury 12 Life’s a Beach 14 Unvarnished & Unspoiled 21 Sailing...
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...Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly mixing along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most extraordinary, plastic waste tide ever faced. Washed out on the coasts in obvious and clearly visible form, the plastic pollution display obviously seen on the beaches is only the preface of the greater story that unfolded further away in the world’s oceans, yet mostly originating from where people stand: the land. In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tons, and, according to a 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 297.5 million tons by 2015. Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature. Plastic bags are in use by consumers worldwide since the 1960’s, (Mc Kinley, 2010). These bags are sometimes called single-use bags, referring to carrying items from a store to a home. Open bags with...
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