Sea turtle success stories along African east coast—but thousands still dying
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Loading... - Laura Ansong
- 24 Aug 2022
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Conservation of sea turtles along much of Africa's east coast has made good progress in recent decades—but tens of thousands of turtles still die each year due to human activity, researchers say.
Experts reviewed evidence from 1965 to the present about sea turtles along the coast of Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa.
Success stories include growing numbers of loggerhead turtles in South Africa and Mozambique, and increasingly effective conservation networks—including one covering most of Tanzania's coast.
But the illegal take of turtles, bycatch (accidental catching) and loss of nesting and foraging habitats remain major threats, with "conservative estimates" of turtles killed by human activity in the tens of thousands annually.
The research team, led by the University of Exeter, included experts from Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa and the wider Western Indian Ocean region.
"Turtles face many threats along the African east coast, from egg to adult," said lead author Casper van de Geer, a Ph.D. student at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.
"Our aim was to bring together everything that is currently known about these turtles, and to identify opportunities to better protect them in this rapidly developing region.
"We found that there's still a lot we don't know about these turtle populations, like how many there actually are or where they spend most of their time and migrate to.
"If we use clutches of eggs laid as a measure of population, then we see that some have recovered well in some places. For example, loggerhead turtles appear to be recovering in South Africa and Mozambique. Read More...
