Monday, November 30, 2009

Sea Turtles

Sea turtles in Costa Rica are said to be "Casualties of Global Warming". With the rising temperatures sea turtles are in great danger. Unlike other mammals who's genes determine their gender, temperature determines the sea turtles gender. If the temperature is higher than 86 degrees, the turtles are all females. Above 93 degrees they are boiled eggs. This will be a problem when the temperatures start to rise permanently there will be no male turtles to mate with the female turtles. To help the turtles scientists are artificially cooling nests with shade or irrigation. “The climate is changing so much faster than before, and these animals depend on so much for temperature.” Carlos Drews, the regional marine species coordinator for the conservation group W.W.F.
Rosenthal, Elisabeth. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/earth/14turtles.html. November 13, 2009.
Posted by at

10 comments:

  1. edenDecember 10, 2009 at 5:09 AM

    VERY COOL Kari. That is a fact I never knew about the sea turtle! wow, it blows me away. Temperature eh? awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  2. KariDecember 10, 2009 at 5:20 AM

    Yea, I didn't know about the temperature thing either. I thought it was really cool.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousDecember 10, 2009 at 5:30 AM

    Kari, although I do care about marine life, I don't think that there is much humans can do about cooling water! Many scientists have shown that the warming sea temperatures is caused by geothermal activity, not humans and global surface temperatures. Good luck with your blog though, it is a very interesting topic!

    ReplyDelete
  4. NtinaDecember 10, 2009 at 5:33 AM

    This is probably the oddest thing i have ever heard about! Really cool though!

    ReplyDelete
  5. GabrielleDecember 10, 2009 at 5:35 AM

    Wow, that is crazy. I guess the turtles could just move further north. The waters definitely below 86 degrees here!

    ReplyDelete
  6. chelseaDecember 10, 2009 at 5:38 AM

    I agree with gabby the turtles need to move! maybe we could help in other ways then just cooling the eggs?

    ReplyDelete
  7. ravenDecember 10, 2009 at 5:59 AM

    This is a pretty cool topic. The thing about the water temperature and the gender is pretty cool. Good luck to you on this blog and all the poor little creatures!

    ReplyDelete
  8. LaurenDecember 10, 2009 at 8:12 AM

    What Gabby and Chelsea say is true- we are seeing animals and insects moving further north as temperatures change. I did not know that about sea turtles- very interesting fact! Thanks Kari.

    ReplyDelete
  9. KariDecember 10, 2009 at 10:31 AM

    It did say in the article that scientists are moving eggs to different locations. So they aren't just cooling the eggs.

    ReplyDelete
  10. NikkiDecember 21, 2009 at 6:59 AM

    Yeah, there are many sea creatures that are moving north because of the rising temperature. Maybe we will soon be seeing animals up here in Maine that we usually see in more southern areas!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)