Under the relative peace and privacy afforded to animals during the CoVID-19 lockdown, panadas are finally “screwing to save their own species,” and Sea Turtles are also benefitting from the pandemic.

Odisha’s Rushikulya rookery, a coastal beach in India, is where the endangered Olive Ridley sea turtle lay their eggs.

At least 50% of the world’s population of Olive Ridley turtles come to the state’s coasts for nesting, according to the Odisha Wildlife Organisation.

Related:

• ABC Says Homemade Sanitizers Don’t Work For Coronavirus – We Disagree, So Here’s a Recipe
• Sold Out – How To Get Vitamin C (Recipe/DIY)
• Does Elderberry Increase Risk Of Death With CoVID-19?
• Coronavirus – Your Guide to the CoVID-19 Pandemic

This event happens once a year and is typically a tourist attraction, but India is under a stay-at-home order. Every year, the Forest Department creates hatcheries along the Indian coast. Authorities aren’t having to work as hard to protect the hatcheries from human intervention. Last year a cyclone severely damaged the hatcheries and the sea turtles were unable to reproduce at normal levels.

According to the Forest Department, over 70,000 Olive Ridleys arrived to take part in the unusual event of day-time mass nesting. Normally, throngs of people — tourists and locals — generally show up to watch the sea turtles and authorities have to deploy considerable resources to keep them away from the habitat.

Business insider

While locals have been forbidden from gathering on the shoreline since last weekend because of the partial shutdown, 97 critically endangered hawksbill sea turtles have hatched on a deserted beach in Brazil.

According to Brazil’s Tamar conservation project, which protects sea turtles, hawksbills lay their eggs along the country’s north-eastern coast and are considered a critically endangered species.

They can grow up to 110cm in length, weigh 85kg and owe their Portuguese name, which translates as “comb turtles”, to the fact that their shells were once widely used to make combs and frames for glasses.

The Gaurdian

Microplastics have been found in every single species of sea turtle, and a new study published in Current Biology suggests that smell could be an explanation for that. Plastics in the water become host to multiple organisms, including plankton. Plankton emit large amounts of dimethyl sulfide, which is an organic compound that a number of marine animals rely on to find food. Sea turtles use their keen sense of smell to locate this compound, and that may be leading the turtles to consume more plastics.

Related: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

According to Matthew Savoca, a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station and one of the study’s authors…

I’ve heard numerous times that animals just eat plastic because they don’t know any better…What this type of research shows is that there are really complex evolutionary mechanisms that govern how animals are finding food.”

CNN

Scientists previously hypothesized that sea turtles consumed plastics because floating bags resembled jellyfish, but that theory doesn’t account for their consumption of other plastics. These plastics block the turtles’ intestinal tract, negatively impacting digestion, and potentially causing the turtle to go into septic shock.

Recommended: Does Elderberry Increase Risk Of Death With CoVID-19?

Microplastics are a threat to nearly all sea turtle populations, which are listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list – all but one species of sea turtles are listed as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered.

Sources:

• Sea Turtles Think Plastic Smells Like Food
• Odors from marine plastic debris elicit foraging behavior in sea turtles
• Sea Turtles
• Depressing Image Shows Dead Baby Sea Turtle Found with 104 Pieces of Plastic in Its Belly