How to Save the Sea Turtles

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Tim Cole, I'm with the Austin Reptile Service, and I've been keeping reptiles and amphibians for forty years. I'm here to talk briefly about sea turtles and how we can help save them. One of the factors on sea turtles nesting problems is when they have lights along the beaches because baby sea turtles always come back to the same beaches they were born on, and they can get distracted by any additional lights. So one of the things that a lot of sea turtle coves or nesting areas are aware of, is they don't have any outdoor lighting. Habitat destruction can be an issue with that also, feral dogs could be an issue with digging up turtle eggs, raccoons could do the same. When boats are out fishing or shrimping most of these nets are required to have what they call turtle excluders on them, so that the turtles won't get tangled up in the nets and drown, and that can be a real serious issue. We've got several kinds of sea turtles throughout the world, we've got several species some of them as small as a hawk's bill turtle which might be three or four feet, up to a leatherback sea turtle that can get eleven feet long."