Shell shock

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/06/2024 (786 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Anyone who isn’t convinced that plastics pose a serious problem for the environment need only watch the YouTube video of a plastic straw being extracted, with great difficulty, from a sea turtle’s nostril by German marine biologist Christine Figgener and her research team in Costa Rica in 2015.

It makes for a disturbing few minutes, but this is the reality for Figgener, who has spent her career working to rescue sea turtles from the brink of extinction. She details the struggle against seemingly impossible forces in her biography My Life with Sea Turtles: A Marine Biologist’s Quest to Protect One of the Most Ancient Animals on Earth.

Figgener explains all there is to know about the seven species of sea turtles, which have suffered perilous declines in population over the past few decades. She also focuses on how political, social and economic issues, on local and international levels, affect efforts to reverse their dwindling numbers, and elaborates on concerns within the scientific community ranging from funding to misogyny.

It makes for fascinating reading, with the only caveat being that Figgener is opaque about providing dates that would situate events and give readers a timeline about her activities and the pace at which the situation for turtles has become dire. Otherwise her account, translated by Jane Billinghurst, will open readers’ eyes even more to the challenges of nature under threat.

An ink drawing of each of these ancient creatures is included at the beginning of seven of the chapters, with details about their anatomy and lives. Who knew that loggerhead turtles have a bite force of 472 pounds per square inch, that it takes green turtles 25 to 45 years to achieve sexual maturity, or that leatherback turtles, at a weight of 600 kilograms, have soft shells instead of a hard carapace?

Figgener spends nights patrolling darkened beaches, searching for females digging nests, collecting their eggs to study and protect from predators — animal and human.

Accumulating data on animals that live largely solitary lives on the ocean is difficult and dangerous. Scientists must be powerful swimmers, ready to jump into the water to catch a massive turtle trying to escape a perceived attacker by making a deep dive. They must wrestle the dead-weight turtle into a boat to examine it and record findings.

Figgener always knew she would leave her home in the industrial Ruhr area of West Germany, “explore life underwater and move to a country far away.” Bites, sunburn and storms are only some of the challenges faced.

In pursuit of her dream, she’s experienced indifference and exclusion from male colleagues, witnessed racism toward non-white researchers, especially locals who are knowledgeable but have no university credentials, and spent frustrating hours scrounging for grants to pay meagre salaries for herself and her staff.

Environmentalists are also up against seafront hotels that shine lights at night, disorienting turtles during nesting season, against tourists that fuel the Costa Rican economy but trample the sands where turtles lay eggs.

Governments, meanwhile, don’t enforce wildlife protection laws, and fishing boats illegally discard nets on the open sea, entangling and killing an estimated half-million sea turtles every year.

Rising temperatures and water levels caused by climate change have resulted in a loss of food supplies. Despite concerted efforts, the sea turtle population continues to plummet. On one beach, nest numbers have declined from 800 to 50 in only 15 years.

Figgener’s final chapters drive home the scope and importance of her work. My Life With Sea Turtles is a worthwhile read, and offers practical advice about how we can all contribute to saving a species teetering on the verge of being lost forever.

Harriet Zaidman is a writer for young people and freelancer living in Winnipeg.