~says conservationist Annette Arjoon-Martins, as more sea turtles die

WITHIN the past two weeks there has been a surge in the number of dead sea turtles, some of which are endangered species, washing up on the Guyana’s coastal shore with no trace or evidence of how they died.

Speaking to the Guyana Chronicle early Sunday morning, conservationist Annette Arjoon-Martins made a call for a much more robust response to what can be considered as an environmental epidemic.

Martins disclosed that just last week, a 1000lb leatherback sea turtle was seen adjacent to Celina Resort and this week a green sea turtle adjacent to the new COVID-19 Hospital.
“The state of decomposition of the leatherback made it difficult to establish cause of death. The green sea turtle was not as decomposed and whist there were no signs of entanglement with fishing the right side was irreparably damaged and appeared to indicate injury from collision with a vessel.”

She added that while sea turtle conservation started in Guyana over four decades ago, the field-monitoring programme has been based at Shell Beach, Region One (Barima-Waini), making it difficult to address incidents that occur in other areas.
Martins noted that while the sea turtle rangers are familiar with establishing cause of death by entanglement in fishing nets or vessel strikes, there is limited capacity to conduct further investigations to determine other causes of death.

She further noted that currently there is a partnership with the University of Guyana and the Georgetown Zoo, the Sea Turtle Conservation University of Guyana and the Georgetown Zoological Park investigations and equipment are limited to determine the cause of the recent rapid deaths of the sea turtles,.

“Whilst an informal and limited partnership exists with the University of Guyana and the Georgetown Zoo for preliminarily investigations and rehabilitation facilities respectively, there is need for a much more robust response capability and additional equipment.”
She noted that there is not much that can be done as there is no technical expertise nor facilities to further any additional investigations, as turtle rangers can only make an assessment based on their usual visual checks, which makes it impossible to determine how the conservation can slow and eventually put an end to the high death rate of sea turtles in Guyana’s waters.

“Unfortunately, we do not have the technical expertise nor facilities to do the necessary investigations to determine cause of death. Beyond our experience with depending on a simple visual check to see fishing net marks and determining that death by drowning would have been the cause, we have not progressed much.”

The giant leatherback sea turtle is the only species of sea turtle that lacks a hard shell. Its carapace is large, elongated and flexible with seven distinct ridges running the length of the animal. It has a thin layer as well as tough, rubbery skin which is strengthened by thousands of tiny bones. The sea turtle is one of four species of marine turtles that nest on Guyana’s beaches.

They were recently placed on the ICUN red list, deeming them an endangered species.
The green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), also known as the green turtle, black (sea) turtle or Pacific green turtle, is a species of large sea turtle of the family Cheloniidae.

This sea turtle’s dorsoventrally flattened body is covered by a large, teardrop-shaped carapace; it has a pair of large, paddle-like flippers. It is usually lightly coloured, although in the Eastern Pacific populations parts of the carapace can be almost black. They too have been listed as an endangered species.