The leatherback sea turtle is the largest of all living turtle species and is the fourth largest modern reptile. Weighing in at as much as 1,500 pounds and capable of attaining an overall length of more than two meters, these massive turtles were well-distributed across the planet for millions of years; fossil records show that they inhabited the earth during the days of the dinosaurs. Due to human activity including fishing, nesting habitat destruction, hunting, and nest robbing, leatherbacks have been driven to the brink of extinction.
A Slow Recovery Ahead
In November of 2013, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) elected to move the leatherback sea turtle from the Critically Endangered list to the Vulnerable list. Even so, conservationists warn that this species, which has come so close to extinction, is still massively endangered and is even continuing to decline in certain parts of its range.
The transfer from the Critically Endangered List is due mainly to robust species recovery throughout the northwest Atlantic Ocean region, including the United States and the Caribbean. This segment of the leatherback sea turtle population is the largest in the world, and recovery is credited to a strong focus on conservation actions. Nesting grounds throughout the region are fiercely protected, light pollution is minimized during nesting season to prevent the turtles from being confused, and there is a strong focus on public education.
Detractors of IUCN’s move to change the turtle’s status point out that the species’ situation in the Pacific is nothing less than bleak. In the East Pacific, leatherback numbers have declined by a devastating 97% in the span of just three generations. During the same period, the West Pacific leatherback population has declined by an equally sobering eighty percent.
The reasons for this rapid decline are many: fisheries bycatch continues unabated for the most part, people continue to hunt the turtles for their meat and consume the eggs from the few active nesting beaches in many areas, coastal developers are not normally made to take the reptiles into consideration, and light pollution problems are not typically addressed. Plastic pollution and climate change are two additional threats that are difficult to address throughout the world; all of these factors combine to paint a bleak picture for leatherback sea turtles and other sea turtle species in the Pacific.
IUCN assessors based their decision to move leatherback turtles to the Vulnerable list because of an overall increase in turtle population worldwide, but the move was a cautious one. “The persistence of significant threats in all regions warrants concern for the future viability of even the larges subpopulation,” assessors note. “Current efforts to protect leatherbacks, their offspring, and their habitats must be maintained – or even augmented, where possible – to reverse declines in Pacific and Indian Ocean subpopulations and to sustain population growth in the Northwest Atlantic.”
Only about one of every 1,000 leatherback sea turtles that hatch survives to adulthood. Though their range is far-reaching, you can count yourself fortunate if you encounter one of these huge reptiles. Costa Rica, Florida, the Caribbean, South America, and the coast of Central Africa are good places to look.