Sea Turtles Are Endangered, and Light Pollution Isn’t Helping

Nearly all species of sea turtles have been classified as endangered. Although there are many reasons for this problem. It is human activities that have outweighed all odds of these species ever standing a chance of survival. Sea turtles have, and still are, slaughtered for their eggs, meat, skin and shells, sea turtles suffer from poaching and overexploitation. To further show humans have tipped the scale of survival, millions of hatchings are killed every year due to disorientation caused by artificial light.

Artificial night lighting, a source of light pollution, is at fault for disorienting creatures that rely on darkness for navigation. This includes newly hatched baby sea turtles. Hatchlings naturally move away from from the dark silhouettes of vegetation on the beach, which should lead them into the ocean. However, beach front lighting and artificial lighting disrupts this process and instead leads hatchings away from the ocean.

Beachfront lighting prevents the turtles from naturally seeing the silhouettes. As a result hatchings are left stranded on the beach which exposes them to predators. The artificial light causes hatchlings to aimlessly wander around the beach until predators, such as birds, get to them.

Many places around the world have taken steps to prevent this from happening. For example, “Coastal counties in Florida have passed ordinances that residents turn off beachfront lights during turtle nesting season.” However because this is not always enforced the problem still remains.

So what can we do? Well, defenders.org offers 5 tips to help prevent hatchlings from not reaching the ocean. Most importantly would be to turn off lights that are visible from the beach, these could be things such as porch lights, street lights, etc. Aside from artificial lights, the article offers other things you could do. We share a common purpose, and that is to help sea turtles from becoming extinct.

Sea turtles are a fundamental link towards marine ecosystems. They help maintain the health of seagrass beds and coral reefs that benefit commercially valuable species such as shrimp, lobster and tuna. They have existed and traveled our seas for the past 100 million years. An sea without them is bound to bring negative consequences. The least people could do is learn about this issue to further enforce rules to prevent sea turtles from going extinct.