NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas - NBC on Earth: Saving Baby Sea Turtles

Episode Date: September 22, 2018

Baby sea turtles make an arduous journey to the sea, and light pollution is one of the many factors that make the trek more difficult. Chief Environmental Affairs Correspondent Anne Thompson reports from Cocoa Beach, Florida, on efforts to protect these vulnerable turtles.

Sea turtles are just an iconic species when we think about the health of our oceans and the world oceans. They're very endearing. When a nest emerges, the hatchlings come spilling out, they face a gauntlet to get to the water. There's birds and crabs and lights to disorient them, all sorts of things. How do these hatchlings find their way into the sea? It's the light that they're really looking for. It's that ambient celestial moonlight that helps them figure out the right way to go. And so wherever that brightest horizon is, that's where the turtles are going to head.

It is an arduous journey to the sea for baby sea turtles no bigger than the palm of your hand. I'm Ann Thompson and this is NBC on Earth. There we go. Tonya Long is a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. She oversees turtle nesting beaches and sports a tattoo of a sea turtle on her foot. She says many of the scientists in the management program have them. It's a balmy night in Cocoa Beach and she shows up with a cooler.

So let's see who we see what we got in here. All right. So we just have a styrofoam cooler here with our hatchlings. How many are in the cooler? We have 13 tonight. Lucky 13. Lucky 13, exactly. And how old are these hatchlings?

These are probably just a couple of days old. So these were turtles that were found during regularly scheduled nest excavations, which are done for hatch success purposes. And we don't dig into these nests with the purpose of finding hatchlings, but if we come across them, then we will go ahead and release them. And if they just aren't quite ready to go, then they get held for a couple of days until they perk up. How do these hatchlings find their way into the sea?

You know, again, it's the light that they're really looking for. It's that ambient celestial moonlight that helps them figure out the right way to go. And so wherever that brightest horizon is, that's where the turtles are going to head. Tonya, I can hear them stirring. Yes. Yes, that's a good sign. That's probably because it's obviously now nighttime, so things have cooled off a little bit, and that's generally their cue to get moving. And they're ready to go. They sound like they're

ready to go. It's really dark here. Is that on purpose? Yes it absolutely is on purpose and that is to make sure that when hatchlings and when nesting females are trying to navigate their way on the beach that they're using the ambient light, the celestial light from the moon, as their cue to figure out where the ocean is. The darkness is a shield for the baby sea turtles. The moon and the stars, their guide. So what's next is we'll just put them on the sand and hopefully they will start crawling. But the hatchlings can get confused by the light we make with deadly results. I'm David Godfrey. I'm executive director of the Sea Turtle Conservancy. Let's talk about the little loggerheads we saw go out last night.

Yes. What are their chances of survival? Usually pretty slim. Really? It's probably less than one in a thousand. Make it to adulthood. Wow. And we know that because we know about how many turtles are coming up to nest and we know about how many hatchlings are going into the water every year. And it's a substantial reduction between the number of hatchlings and the number of adults. You know, when a nest emerges, the

hatchlings come spilling out, they face a gauntlet to get to the water. There's birds and crabs and lights to disorient them, all sorts of things. But even the ones that do then have to get through the surf and all the fish out there waiting for them. There's a lot to overcome just in that first day. Why are their odds so low once they get in the water of survival? Sadly, they're a bite-sized morsel. They're a small animal in a great big ocean, and lots of things eat them. Unfortunately it's part of the ecological role that sea turtles fill. They produce a lot of nutrients for the beach and dune system in their nests and the eggs

and those that don't make it off the beach and dune system, in their nests and the eggs and those that don't make it off the beach. And then in the near shore environment, they feed things, sadly. But those that do make it become very important members of the community where they take up residency. Why is it that that 20-foot journey from the nest to the water, why is that so important? Well, it's probably one of the most vulnerable times in a turtle's life. There are a lot of things on land. They're very slow moving, so things can get them. And it's also one of the places where we as humans can do the most

to give them a fighting chance. This is where we can control the environment a little better. How can people help turtles? Well, people who live on the beach can do things like manage their lights better, so we're not disorienting the animals. We have to control our flow of garbage and plastics entering the marine environment. On a grander scale, we're all contributing in some way to climate change, and that has long-term ramifications for these animals.

David, what's the biggest human threat to turtles? That's a tough one. We are impacting their habitat in many ways, and that happens from coastal development. It happens from commercial fishing. It happens because of the things we're releasing into the water. In general, I would say it's what we're doing to their habitat. And is it, you talked about climate change. That seems to be the X factor here?

It is. You know, our organization has been working for 60 years to protect and recover these animals. And there are good signs in a lot of places. Green turtles are growing exponentially in Florida. But we also see some warning signs on the horizon. It's warmer and warmer, and turtles are incubating in hotter nests. And it looks like we're producing way too many females from those nests, and that has long-term ramifications. Is that because temperature plays a role in incubation? It does. Whether a little hatchling turns into a male or a female is determined by the temperature at which it's incubating at a particular time. And as it warms up, we're finding

more and more females being produced in nests. Why is Florida so important to the American sea turtle population? Well, evolutionarily, they've just done better here. They nest more successfully. The hatchlings that leave this beach for whatever reason have survived to adulthood better than those coming from other beaches. And over the eons, it means that this place is where they have survived from and come back to nest at.

And so now we see over 90% of the U.S. nesting population here in Florida. Wow. And is it on both coasts? It is on both coasts and the Panhandle, but certainly concentrated on the East Coast. Why on the East Coast as opposed to the Gulf side? Most likely because of the Gulf Stream. The hatchlings swim out to sea, they reach that Gulf Stream, and that's the habitat they're looking for. Floating mats of sargassum weed, they can take up residency, they find food, habitat, shelter.

That's where they're trying to get to, and they can get to it fairly easy from the East Coast. I always think of the East Coast as more densely populated than the West Coast. So is this a case where humans are invading turtle habitat? Well, they are certainly here on the East Coast just as well on the Gulf Coast. I don't know that I can see a difference in the population on either side. The issue is happening on both coasts. What's the biggest threat to turtle habitat today? It's a combination of things, but largely stemming from our wanting to live on the beach.

You know, it's beautiful here. People want to see the beach when they wake up in the morning. We want our homes and our condos and we want to vacation here. So we're encroaching on their habitat. And there are ways to do that so that we can coexist with sea turtles. It just takes some simple rules for people to follow. So let's talk about people want to see the beach both at day and at night, and so we've lit up the beach as it were so we can see it. By lighting up the beach, what danger does that pose to sea turtles? Well, if you think about turtles evolving

over millions of years, when hatchlings emerge from nests, they have to, they've never been outside before. They've put an egg, they've made their way to the surface, they have to find the sea. And the way they evolved to do that was to look for certain cues. One is the slope, of course, typically goes down to the water, but probably the more important one is light. And on a natural dark beach, the ocean is the lightest horizon. So they cue very strongly towards the lighter horizon. As we've lit up our homes and condos and roads, the little hatchlings come out,

they need to mad dash to that water, and unfortunately they become disoriented by the lights. Many of them go the wrong way, end up in parking lots and pools and in harm's way. Now with penalties paid by BP from the Gulf oil spill, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is putting in turtle friendly lighting in hotels and condo complexes along the coast. In many cases

mandated by local law. My name is Tom Kelsch. I'm the Senior Vice President for the Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. So let's talk about this building that's behind you. This has been retrofitted? Yes. Back following the oil spill, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation gave an award to the Sea Turtle Conservancy to work with the state of Florida and other local partners to do retrofits on this

building in particular and others like it to help address the light pollution problem that affects sea turtle nesting. So what have you done to this building? The lights have been switched from a bright white light to an amber toned light. Sea turtles are adapted to be able to respond to white light, not the amber colored light, and so they don't actually see that lighting and therefore can do their normal nesting and when the hatchlings come out of the nest, go off to the sea. How much does it cost to retrofit a building like that? The estimates are between a couple thousand dollars for a single family home. For a building like this, I would estimate probably maybe $5,000 to $10,000.

What is the National Fish and Wildlife Federation's interest in retrofitting a building like this? So the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is actually the largest private conservation funder in the United States. And in 2013, we were awarded the responsibility to administer some of the settlement funds coming out of the Deepwater Horizon spill. Those funds are to be used to help remedy harm to fish and wildlife resources that were impacted by the oil spill, sea turtles being one of the most impacted species. So we use those

dollars to support projects that are helping to recover some of these populations and including projects like these that are retrofitting the light pollution issue. How much has your foundation spent on retrofitting lighting? To date, we have invested about $5 million to deal with this issue, and we are looking to expend probably a similar amount to deal with other priority nesting beaches across the state. Now, the BP oil spill happened in the Gulf of Mexico. We're here on the Atlantic Ocean. So what's the connection?

The connection is that about 90% of the sea turtle, the loggerhead sea turtle population within the Gulf of Mexico nests here on Atlantic Coast beaches. We have already made investments to address light pollution across the Panhandle. We'll be making similar investments to address issues in the Sarasota and southwest area of the state of Florida. But the Atlantic coast is also very important when it comes to helping to bolster the populations. So are sea turtles actually benefiting now from the BP oil space? They are. With have, with some of the investments

we've made in the panhandle, light pollution has been reduced or eliminated on many priority beaches. Once the turtles go into the ocean, what kind of path do they travel? So these turtles that are born on these beaches, and even the turtles born on the Gulf beaches, ultimately get into the Gulf Stream current and will make their way all around the North Atlantic Ocean and then come back basically to the beaches here in Florida and the Gulf of Mexico and spend some of the rest of their lives before they're ready to nest themselves. So they become world travelers? They are world travelers. They're traveling tens of thousands of miles?

Tens of thousands of miles? Tens of thousands of miles, yes. An amazing journey. Why is it important to your foundation to invest in the protection of sea turtles? Sea turtles are just an iconic species when we think about the health of our oceans and the world oceans. I think everyone's seen movies like Finding Nemo with the wonderful Crush character there. They're very endearing. They're almost like dinosaurs in terms of their unique life history and their charisma. So they're very important just to, I think, human nature to know that they exist and populations are rebounding. Out on the beach in the daytime, David Godfrey shows me a turtle's nest.

It's marked with a Do Not Disturb sign. This is really here just to let the public know that there's a turtle here. Please don't dig it up or drive over this spot. But this is in all likelihood a loggerhead sea turtle nest. It's been here for probably a month and a half. The little hatchlings are getting ready to emerge pretty soon. Now with these different, more diffused lights,

as it were, what kind of diff, can you quantify, is it making a difference? Is this new kind of lighting making a difference in hatchling survival? The technology for sea turtle friendly lighting is amazing. It really does work. We're able to, we have a three pronged rule. Keep it low, keep it long, keep it shielded. By low we want it lower to the ground, by long we're referring to a longer wavelength of light which for whatever reason doesn't seem to attract the turtles, and keep it shielded.

We don't want the light to reach the beach. So translate that into my eyes. So what's the difference that I'm going to see between turtle-friendly lighting and typical lighting? When you walk outside of your condo, you're going to have light where you need it. We keep it low, and it's lighting up the ground or it's lighting up the parking lot, but it's not spilling out to the beach or even to the sky. And it's shielded so that it's directionally sent where we need it and not where it's not needed out onto the beach. And the longer wavelength light is typically amber in color, kind of orangish. We try not to go to red, although that would actually be the best,

but for whatever reason, people don't want to live under pure red light. But that amber light is really pleasant. And in fact, you can see better in it as a human in that amber light than other types of light because you don't lose your night vision when you pass through it. And is it making a difference in sea turtle survival? Absolutely. When we do these retrofit projects, we call them, we go into a place and look at their lighting and come up with the best new turtle technology. And we see disorientation rates in front of those properties drop to zero in almost all cases. To zero? To zero. Wow. So turtles that were disorienting all around the

state of Florida because of different properties are not disorienting anymore. So we've calculated that tens of thousands of hatchlings every year are making it to the water that otherwise would have been disoriented by the lights. All of this to keep the little ones headed in the right direction. First one in. And take that one in 1,000 chance at growing up. From Cocoa Beach, Florida, I'm Ann Thompson, and you've been listening to NBC on Earth.