Some 70,000 turtle eggs to be whisked far from oil

By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 23 mins ago

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. – An effort to save thousands of sea turtle hatchlings from dying in the oily Gulf of Mexico will begin in the coming weeks in a desperate attempt to keep an entire generation of threatened species from vanishing.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will coordinate the plan, which calls for collecting about 70,000 turtle eggs in up to 800 nests buried in the sand across Florida Panhandle and Alabama beaches.

It's never been done on such a massive scale. But doing nothing, experts say, could lead to unprecedented deaths. There are fears the turtles would be coated in oil and poisoned by crude-soaked food.

"This is an extraordinary effort under extraordinary conditions, but if we can save some of the hatchlings, it will be worth it as opposed to losing all of them," said Chuck Underwood of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"We have a much higher degree of certainty that if we do nothing and we allow these turtles to emerge and go into the Gulf and into the oil ... that we could in fact lose most of them, if not all of them," he added. "There's a chance of losing a whole generation."

Dozens of workers are fanned out across the coast marking turtle nests, most of them threatened loggerheads, which nest largely along Florida Panhandle and Alabama beaches.

In about 10 days, they will begin the arduous process of excavating the nests, mostly by hand. The digging must be slow and delicate — aside from making sure the shells don't crack, the eggs can't be rolled around or repositioned to protect the embryo inside.

Then the eggs will be carefully placed in specially designed Styrofoam containers, like coolers, along with sand and moisture to mimic the natural nest. The containers will then be trucked about 500 miles east to a temperature-controlled warehouse at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.

There, the eggs will remain until hatchlings emerge, and they will be placed one-by-one on Florida's east coast, where the turtles can swim oil-free into the Atlantic Ocean.

"There's a whole lot of unknowns in what we're doing," Underwood acknowledged, noting many of the hatchlings could die anyway because of the stressful moving process.

All of the sea turtles that venture into Gulf waters have already suffered because of commercial fishing and habitat loss. Endangered Kemp's ridleys, which are nesting on beaches in Mexico and Texas, have washed up by the dozens dead along Gulf beaches since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that has gushed up to 130 million gallons of oil into the sea.

While some have been found oiled, it remains unclear how many of them died because of it. Tests are ongoing. The Kemp's ridleys aren't in as immediate of danger because oil hasn't been washing ashore yet in their nesting places in the western Gulf. But some fear those hatchlings also could eventually make it into the crude.

Threatened loggerheads, which are currently being considered for the added protection of endangered status, also have been found oiled and dead since the spill started, along with leatherbacks and green turtles.

David Godfrey, executive director of the Gainesville, Fla.-based Sea Turtle Conservancy, agrees this plan is the only option to save as many turtles as possible.

He said if left alone, the turtles will soon begin emerging from their nests and heading straight out to sea to feed in masses of oil-soaked seaweed.

Even more unusual, in a field that typically sees division between government entities and conservationists, there is agreement on what to do. Teri Shore, program director with the California-based Sea Turtle Restoration Project, said she thought the plan was good given the circumstances.

"If those sea turtles swim out to the Gulf, they're going to face a massive oil slick which will cause them to perish or at least significantly decrease their chances of survival," she said.

Godfrey said he agreed with the strategy and called it a "pretty amazing plan" because conservationists rarely support relocating sea turtle nests. They often push for a change in human behaviors, such as dimming lights along beaches at night to avoid disorienting them.

But no one can control the oil, he noted.

"We're talking about allowing the entire year's class of hatchlings to emerge and swim to their certain doom, and are we just going to sit back and let that happen?" he said. "We just can't."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100630/...ng_sea_turtles

Sea turtle egg evacuations begin along oiled Gulf
By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Writer – 26 mins ago

PORT ST. JOE, Fla. – Biologist Lorna Patrick dug gingerly into the beach Friday, gently brushing away sand to reveal dozens of leathery, golfball-sized loggerhead sea turtle eggs.

Patrick, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, carefully plucked the eggs from the foot-deep hole and placed them one-by-one in a cooler layered with moist sand from the nest, the first step in a sweeping and unprecedented turtle egg evacuation to save thousands of threatened hatchlings from certain death in the oiled Gulf of Mexico.

After about 90 minutes of parting the sand with her fingers like an archaeological dig, 107 eggs were placed in two coolers and loaded onto a FedEx temperature-controlled truck. They are being transported to a warehouse at Florida's Kennedy Space Center where they will incubate and, hopefully, hatch before being released into the Atlantic Ocean.

The effort began in earnest along Florida's Panhandle, with two loggerhead nests excavated. Up to 800 more nests across Alabama and Florida beaches will be dug up in the coming months in an attempt to move some 70,000 eggs to safety.

Scientists fear that if left alone, the hatchlings would emerge and swim into the oil, where most would likely die, killing off a generation of an already imperiled species.

"This is a giant experiment," said Jeff Trindahl, director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which helped organize the plan.

Trindahl acknowledged many of the hatchlings may die from the stress of being moved, but he said there was no other option.

Each nest is monitored from the moment it is made and left in place for about 50 days. Then the eggs will be taken to the NASA temperature-controlled warehouse, kept at roughly 85 degrees, where they should begin hatching within about 10 days or so of arrival. The hope is that the ones that survive will return to nest where they were born after about 30 years, but no one knows if the experiment will be successful.

FedEx has offered to transport the eggs free of charge.

Virginia Albanese, CEO of FedEx Custom Critical, said the company will continue the effort for about four months, averaging three 500-mile trips a week from the Panhandle to Cape Canaveral. By mid-July, the company expects to be making six trips a week in its 53-foot customized 18-wheeler.

The special coolers, manpower and other expenses associated with the plan could cost the federal government, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and private partners hundreds of thousands of dollars, which BP will be asked to pay for, said Thomas Strickland, assistant secretary of the U.S. Interior Department's division of Fish and Wildlife and Parks.

"It's a major rescue effort and it's unprecedented," Strickland said. "There's anxiety and there should be because it's a delicate operation."

Loggerhead turtles typically lay about 125 eggs per nest. The government has no way of knowing exactly how many of the species live in the Gulf, but use nest numbers to determine population health.

Fish and Wildlife has proposed increasing loggerhead protections under federal law from a threatened species to an endangered species, largely because nest numbers have been steadily declining over the years.

Even without an oil spill, the vast majority of hatchlings don't make it to maturity, in part because they're eaten by predators. Experts estimate about one out of 1,000 survive to reproduce.

Sea turtles have also suffered because of commercial fishing and habitat loss. Some obviously oiled turtles have washed ashore since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, while other dead turtles have showed no outward signs of crude.

Recent tests by the federal government indicate some likely drowned in fishing nets, possibly during emergency shrimping seasons opened before the oil reached Louisiana and Mississippi shorelines.

David Godfrey, executive director of the Florida-based Sea Turtle Conservancy, said he was hoping for a 50 percent hatch rate for the evacuated eggs.

"Any turtles that survive is a great success because we know they're doomed over here," he said.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100709/...saving_turtles