Sea Turtles

It's too early to say whether President Obama has the upper hand in campaign 2012, but the verdict is in on one point: Obama is having the more relaxing week. As the Republican presidential field jockeys for advantage in the final days before the Iowa caucuses, the Obamas move from one really fun sun-splashed outing to the next. Tuesday found the first family releasing four green sea turtles into Hanauma Bay. The turtles, each 18 months old, were born at Sea Life Park north of the bay. The bay is closed on Tuesdays for routine maintenance, giving the Obamas privileged access to a tourist spot famous for its spectacular snorkeling.

California has a state bird, a state flower and even a state fossil — the saber-toothed cat. Joining the bunch could be an official state marine reptile. A bill introduced last week by Assemblyman Paul Fong (D-Cupertino) would name the endangered Pacific leatherback sea turtle to a growing list of symbols that includes the California quail, the gray whale, the California poppy and the garibaldi — the state marine fish. The leatherback, the world's largest sea turtle, would claim an entry in the law books right below — and not to be confused with — its relative the desert tortoise, a landlubber that has held the title of state reptile since 1972.

Each summer, a ritual millions of years old unfolds on this beach, next to the high-rise condos and beach chairs, the T-shirt shops and the Hooters across the road. A 300-pound loggerhead turtle drags herself out of the water for the first time since her birth, probably on the same beach, 18 years ago. Under the moonlight, she kicks a 2-foot-deep hole into the sand, drops in a gleaming heap of eggs, covers it and then lumbers back out to sea. Two months later, 100 or more tiny turtles will scratch their way up through the sand, glimpse the shine of the moon and stars on the water that serves as some kind of celestial GPS, and head for the sea. Fishermen's nets, children with sand shovels, confusing waterfront lights and pollution have plundered the sea turtles, leaving all five species that inhabit the Gulf of Mexico endangered or threatened.

It's too early to say whether President Obama has the upper hand in campaign 2012, but the verdict is in on one point: Obama is having the more relaxing week. As the Republican presidential field jockeys for advantage in the final days before the Iowa caucuses, the Obamas move from one really fun sun-splashed outing to the next. Tuesday found the first family releasing four green sea turtles into Hanauma Bay. The turtles, each 18 months old, were born at Sea Life Park north of the bay. The bay is closed on Tuesdays for routine maintenance, giving the Obamas privileged access to a tourist spot famous for its spectacular snorkeling.

Is it possible to save a generation without breaking any eggs? That's the tricky question the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FedEx and hundreds of volunteers are beginning to answer this week as they dig up more than 70,000 turtle eggs on the gulf shore and transport them to the oil-free beaches of Cape Canaveral, Fla., where they'll be hatched in a warehouse and released into the ocean. It's one of the most ambitious wildlife nest relocations ever attempted, biologists said, a risky experiment to prevent widespread mortality of five threatened and endangered turtle species.

The hospital waiting room was packed with patients, but not with humans. These were endangered green sea turtles covered with golf-ball-sized growths. At least 40 scientists and veterinarians participated in delicate surgeries at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center on Tuesday to remove noncancerous tumors, called fibropapilloma. The tumors, some of them on the turtles' eyes, resembled moldy cauliflower. Once the tumors are removed, some turtles will have a chance to regain lost sight.

A cold snap has caused a high number of the world's most endangered sea turtles to wash ashore dead on Cape Cod beaches. Thirty Kemp's Ridley sea turtles have been reported on the beaches since Thursday. Nineteen were dead. Sea turtles suffering from hypothermia often wash ashore in November and December. When the animals' heart rate and body temperature fall, they become immobile. Wind blows them to shore, where they risk freezing to death.

Turtles are the oldest reptiles on Earth, lethargic in fable, yet surprisingly graceful in reality. These lumbering, air-breathing, peaceful creatures are unlikely candidates for controversy. Yet, the languid sea turtles are the focus of a delicate political and economic ballet involving the U.S. shrimping industry, the U.S. Department of Commerce and environmentalists--a ballet that demonstrates a growing clash between protecting endangered species and maintaining precarious marine industries.

[ CHELONIA MYDAS ] Although there may be an odd sighting once in a while, sea turtles are not typically associated with California. Restricted to warm tropical waters, the rare green sea turtle that wanders north in summer must retreat south with the coming of winter. Imagine the surprise of scientists when they discovered 50 to 60 of these turtles living in south San Diego Bay in 1976.

An advocacy group working to save endangered sea turtles unveiled a campaign Tuesday to discourage visitors to Baja California from eating the reptiles. The campaign coincides with the season of Lent, when the turtles -- which live on beaches and in the water off Mexico's Baja Peninsula -- are often eaten by visitors and residents who mistakenly consider the reptiles an acceptable substitute for meat during the religious period.

Federal agencies have changed the designation ofloggerhead sea turtles from a single threatened species to nine distinct population segments; five are listed as endangered and four are listed as threatened. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the change will help scientists tailor conservation efforts to deal with threats faced by genetically distinct groups of the species in regions around the world. The decision Friday was in response to legal petitions filed in 2007 by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Turtle Island Restoration Network and Oceana for additional protections for the loggerheads.

In Tennessee Williams' play "Suddenly, Last Summer," the hatching of sea turtles in the Galapagos is described in desperately lovely detail by a woman who has just lost her son. "The narrow beach, the color of caviar, was all in motion, but the sky was in motion too ? as the hatched sea turtles made their dash to the sea while the birds hovered and swooped to attack, and hovered ? and swooped to attack!" The image haunts the play, symbolizing her son's fate, the fleet brutality of nature, the perilous race of survival, the fickleness of God. It lingers long after the details of the story have blurred.

"Let's go free some turtles, people!" With that cry, a flotilla of six boats motored slowly from the Louisiana state marine lab in Grand Isle, bound 50 miles due south with a precious cargo: 32 endangered sea turtles that had been plucked from the Gulf of Mexico's oily waters this summer. Their successful release this week ? the first rescued turtles returned to gulf waters off Louisiana ? signaled a milestone in the ecosystem's recovery from the 205 million gallons of oil that spewed from a blown-out deep-water well, and a benchmark in the effort to rehabilitate the region's wildlife.

Is it possible to save a generation without breaking any eggs? That's the tricky question the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FedEx and hundreds of volunteers are beginning to answer this week as they dig up more than 70,000 turtle eggs on the gulf shore and transport them to the oil-free beaches of Cape Canaveral, Fla., where they'll be hatched in a warehouse and released into the ocean. It's one of the most ambitious wildlife nest relocations ever attempted, biologists said, a risky experiment to prevent widespread mortality of five threatened and endangered turtle species.

Wearing purple fireproof gloves, George Ross leaned over the side of a small boat and gingerly placed his igniter package — essentially a modified Molotov cocktail — into a syrupy pool of black oil that had bubbled up from the BP spill site a few miles away. The fuse sputtered, then a marine flare spit flames between two half-gallon plastic jugs filled with diesel gel and lashed together with foam and tape. In seconds, a blaze roared up, black smoke poured skyward and the air sizzled with the sound of burning oil. "Accch, she's got the fire now," said Ross, a grizzled Scotsman who works on oil spills around the world.

Of the hundreds of sea turtles found dead along the Gulf Coast since the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig disaster, the majority examined so far appear to have died by drowning or aspirating sediment from the seafloor, a federal fisheries official said Thursday. Early findings suggest that many of the endangered turtles may have died because they were getting caught in fishing nets, not the oil spill — at least in the immediate aftermath of the BP accident. Investigators suspect that a last-minute shrimping season authorized after the April 20 blowout — and immediately before the first major wave of turtle deaths — could have led to the animals becoming trapped in trawlers' nets.

Nicaragua has deployed machine gun-toting police force dressed in battle fatigues and combat boots to make this Pacific coast beach safe for sea turtles. Each year, guided by moonlight, tens of thousands of sea turtles crawl out of the surf to lay hundreds of thousands of eggs in the beach at Chococente and elsewhere along the coast.