Turtle deaths ‘should be investigated’

WITH three dead leatherback turtles having washed ashore at the coast since last week, calls are being made for an investigation to be launched into the occurrence.
The Senior Technical Advisor of the Namibia Coast Conservation and Management Project (Nacoma), Rod Braby, said local marine specialists should be appointed to examine the behaviour of turtles, whales and dolphins along Namibia’s coastline.

Braby said Namibia seems to have become an important feeding ground for turtles because of an increase in jellyfish numbers.’This has become a hotspot for turtles and therefore we need to protect them. They eat the jellyfish that feed off fish larvae and consequently threaten our fisheries,’ he said.Braby is currently working on an article about leatherback turtles in the south Atlantic for a conservation magazine.While some say the frequency of dead turtles washing ashore is increasing, the acting Deputy Director at the Ministry of Fisheries’ research facility at Swakopmund, Rudi Cloete, said there have not been any other reports besides the three since last week.’It’s common. If there were many more, we would become worried and start investigating the matter,’ he said.Cloete said ‘post mortems’ had been done on the carcasses, but he could not provide the findings. Meanwhile, marine tour operators say they’ve witnessed killer whales (orcas) hunting turtles along the central coast. ‘We saw a turtle swimming to one of our boats, wanting to get onboard, trying to escape from an orca, but it was too late. The whale got hold of it and dragged it away,’ said tour operator Neels Dreyer. ‘We have also noticed that when there are orcas around, more turtles wash ashore.’Director of Marine Living Resources at the Ministry of Fisheries, Dr Moses Maurihungirire, said turtles were not common in Namibian waters and carcasses washing ashore was fairly regular. He felt not all the blame could be put on the long-line fishing industry, said to be a major killer of turtles.’They are hardy creatures and could be dragged along for a long distance and still be able to survive,’ he said. ‘There could be other reasons for their fatalities too.’He does not favour appointing more maritime specialists.Within the Benguela sea region, stretching from Angola to South Africa, 4 000 turtles are estimated to become longline fishing by-catch victims annually. It is estimated that more than 600 turtles are caught in Namibian waters annually.The Environmental News Network recently reported that an international team of scientists have identified a nesting population of leatherback sea turtles in Gabon, West Africa, as the world’s largest. The research, published in the May issue of ‘Biological Conservation’, involved land and aerial surveys that estimated a population of between 15 730 and 41 373 female turtles on nesting beaches. The study highlights the importance of conservation to manage protected areas in Gabon.