Sea turtle egg evacuations begin

2010-07-10 21:12

Port St Joe - Biologist Lorna Patrick dug gingerly into the beach on Friday, gently brushing away sand to reveal dozens of leathery, golfball-sized loggerhead sea turtle eggs.

Patrick, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, carefully plucked the eggs from the 30cm-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 Patrick spent about 90 minutes 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 Centre 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 imperilled species.

Stress

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

Trandahl 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 30°C, 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.

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.

- AP