2022-2023 ~40,000 nests?
2020-2021 ~23,000 nests
2010-2011 ~10,000 nests
2000-2001 ~4,000 nests
1990-1991 ~1,000 nests
1980s ~500 nests
* Florida Wildlife Commission, using two-year averages as green turtle nesting totals appear to vary in a two-year cycle. These are not total statewide (or U.S.) nesting estimates, but counts of nesting at 27 long-studied beaches, making up a representative sample of known Florida nesting beaches. Total nest counts in 2022 were 37,000
Here’s 17th-century British navigator/pirate/early naturalist William Dampier, on the Caribbean’s vast green turtle flotillas and the swarms of fish traveling in their wake:
“I heard of a monstrous green turtle once taken at Port Royal in the Bay of Campeachy [ed. note: then the capital of Jamaica] that was four foot deep from the back to the belly, and the belly six foot broad. … [M]ultitudes of Turtles go from their common places of feeding and abode, to those laying eggs: and at the time the Turtle resort to these places to lay their Eggs, they are accompanied by abundance of Fish, especially Sharks; the places that the Turtle then leave being at that time destitute of Fish, which follow the Turtle.”
By the mid-20th century the “multitudes of turtles” were nearly gone. When Florida wildlife staff began counting green turtle nests in the 1970s, they found only about 500 each year and sometimes fewer. NOAA’s unhappy summary reports a “catastrophic global decline of the species” with six causes: (a) “by-catch,” as turtles drown in nets towed by shrimp boats; (2) direct hunting, taking green turtles “in extraordinarily high numbers for their fat, meat, and eggs”; (3) loss of nesting grounds, through beach erosion, seawall construction, and bright hotel lighting that deter night-time nesting; (4) collisions with boats close to shore; (5) ocean pollution, in particular plastics and balloons; and most recently (6) climate change and warming ocean temperatures. The green turtles’ decline is typical: the International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists all seven sea turtle species — greens, loggerheads, leatherbacks, Kemp’s Ridleys, olive Ridleys, flatbacks, hawksbills — as either “threatened,” “endangered,” or “critically endangered.”
Some of these threats — floating plastics, warming water — are daunting, global-scale issues. Others seem cheap and simple to fix. Most countries, including the U.S., have banned turtle hunting for food and jewelry, and excluded turtle products from international trade in 1977 through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Congress in 1987 adopted a law requiring shrimp boats serving the U.S. — whether local or foreign — to equip their nets with “Turtle Exclusion Devices,” which are metal grilles with holes allowing unintentionally trapped turtles to swim out of the nets, costing $325-$550 each. (See below for the WTO’s record of a celebrated U.S.-Mexico trade dispute over the application of this regulation to foreign boats, which the panels eventually decided in favor of the U.S.) And the Florida government under Gov. Lawton Chiles in 1991, meanwhile, imposed beach protection rules and night-time blackouts during nesting months.
A generation later, these cheap and simple fixes look like they’ve worked. Florida’s green turtle nesting counts, measured in two-year cycles, show very strong recovery. The Florida Wildlife Commission’s most recent report, out early this year, shows an 80-fold increase in nesting counts since the early 1980s: a few hundred a year then, about 40,000 per year in 2021 and 2022. The official count for the 2023 nesting season won’t come out until early 2024, but individual beach counts suggest a boom year with as many as 70,000 nests. Nor again are green turtles unique; populations of the smaller and rarer Kemp’s Ridley turtle in Mexico has also rebounded, and the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service has successfully started a new Texas nesting ground.
Not yet anything on the scale of Dampier’s “multitudes”, of course. And looking ahead, the challenges of floating plastics and warming water aren’t simply and probably won’t be cheap. But nonetheless, after many bad decades. the turtles have had a few good ones.
Dampier’s A New Voyage Round the World (1699, Chapter 5) recalls the massive Caribbean turtle populations of the 17th century.
NOAA’s sad review of their 20th-century decline.
The Palm Beach Post reports a boom nesting season for 2023.
And the Florida Wildlife Commission reports on nesting totals for five turtle species at “index beaches” from 1989 forward.
Another example:
The Kemp’s Ridley turtle, a smaller species that is unique as a daytime nester, is the world’s most endangered turtle. Until recently, Kemp’s Ridleys nested only on three stretches of beach in Tamaulipas (Mexican Gulf Coast, just south of Texas), and are thus especially vulnerable to oil spills and habitat loss. KR nest counts declined by over 99% in the later 20th century, from 30,000-40,000 recorded in a 1947 count to 702 in 1985. Since then totals have rebounded to about 9,000 per year in Mexico, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has created a second nesting site on Padre Island in Texas, whose nest counts are up from an initial 7 to 353 last year. Background from FWS.
Policy:
The CITES (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species) homepage.
The State Department explains shrimping import and turtle conservation rules.
And the WTO’s record of “DS-58,” a five-year case eventually validating the U.S.’ application of TED requirements to foreign shrimping boats.
And some work to do in Asia, with some very modern advice from the classics:
CITES Secretariat (2019) reports persistent illegal turtle trade in Southeast Asia.
And proto-conservationist Mencius, somewhere around 320 BC near present-day Kaifeng, has TED-like advice for King Hui of Liang:
“If you ban nets with fine mesh from ponds, there will be more fish and turtles than the people can eat. If you ban axes from the forests on the hillsides except in the proper season, there will be more timber than the people can use.”
Mencius, with the passage on nets, excluder devices, and turtles in Chapter A3.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
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