Average counts of green turtle nests at 27 Florida “core index beaches,” two-year average*
2020-2021 ~23,000 nests
2010-2011 ~10,000 nests
2000-2001 ~4,000 nests
1990-1991 ~1,000 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; they are counts of nesting at 27 long-studied beaches, representing about 10% of the known Florida nesting beaches.
Here’s a good idea: Somewhere around 320 B.C., proto-conservationist Mencius offers King Hui of Liang (near present-day Kaifeng) a simple solution to a complex problem:
“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.”
Twenty-three centuries later, and in the ocean rather than in ponds, all seven sea turtle species are “endangered,” “threatened,” or “critically endangered.” As large, armored reptiles with few natural predators, these turtles are very tough. Their nesting season this summer will be roughly the 150 millionth; the series has outlasted not only the last seven ice ages, but the end-of-Cretaceous asteroid that wiped out their early contemporaries the ammonite and the plesiosaur.
But maybe they are no longer tough enough. Some are caught and traded for shell jewelry. Many more fall victim to “by-catch,” as shrimp and fishing fleets suck them into bag-shaped shrimp trawl nets or catch them on long lines meant for shark and tuna. And many more, with beach erosion and harvesting of nests for eggs, never hatch at all. This series of losses accelerated in the mid-20th century; to take one example, the global estimate of nesting leatherback females done by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature dropped from about 90,000 in 1980 to 54,000 in 2010.
How to respond? Sea turtle protection in the United States may, tentatively, be succeeding, with a mix of three measures:
(1) Trade restriction: The 184 countries and territories in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the world’s first international trade-and-environment agreement, listed all sea turtles in ‘Appendix I,’ in the 1980s, banning trade in turtle jewelry and other products.
(2) By-catch reduction: To reduce by-catch, the United States in 1987 banned sale or import of shrimp caught by boats which do not use Turtle Excluder Devices or “TEDs.” These are barred metal grills — something like the wide meshes like those Mencius recommended for fishnets in ponds — placed in the neck of the bag-shaped shrimp nets to let mistakenly captured turtles swim out. They cost about $375. Each summer, the State Department publishes a list of countries which, through compliance with this rule, can export ocean-caught shrimp to the U.S. The most recent certifies 41 countries and territories as “equivalent” to the U.S. in turtle protection, and thus able to export wild-caught shrimp to the United States.
(3) Beach protection: National and state laws, and local regulations set aside beaches for nesting, and limit their use. As an example, Florida’s Marine Turtle Conservation Act (passed in 1991 under then-Gov. Lawton Chiles) bars over-building, lighting schemes that can disorient hatchlings in season, and disruption of nesting by tourists.
Does it work? Tentatively, yes. Florida’s green turtle population is a case in point: while totals vary up and down each year, Florida Wildlife Commission figures shows about 20 times as many nests in the 2020/2021 season as there were in the early 190s, when the national TED and Florida beach protection laws began. Kemp’s Ridley turtle nesting levels (almost exclusively on a single stretch of Mexican beach, though with outposts in Texas and Cape Hatteras) are up from a near-extinction low of 200 in the 1980s to about 5000 a decade ago, and perhaps as many as 20,000 in 2020. On a larger scale, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s estimate of leatherback nesting females has risen from 54,000 in 2010 to 64,000 as of 2020, and looks ahead under current population trends (driven by strong growth in Atlantic populations) to 79,000-110,000 by 2040.
Just a start, of course. Hardly Mencius’ “more than you can eat”; and (as an example) the IUCN’s optimistic take on Atlantic leatherbacks is offset by continuing Pacific leatherback decline. And apparently positive trends remain open to newer questions about rising ocean temperatures, acidification, plastics accumulation, and beach erosion as sea levels rise. But this said, a promising start and some validation for Mencius’ rather old, still simple, and still good idea.
The Florida Wildlife Commission reports on nesting totals for five turtle species at “index beaches” from 1989 forward.
A worried World Wildlife Fund fact-sheet.
The IUCN has assessments for all seven sea turtle species; optimistic projections for the leatherback here.
Reports from:
Florida: UCF ponders growth in small-turtle nesting.
… and Fort Myers explains beach lighting rules in the May to October nesting season.
Hawaii: NOAA’s Pacific Islands office on hawksbills in Hawaii.
Texas: The National Park Service on Kemp’s Ridley nesting.
Australia: Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Water, and the Environment on flatback turtle conservation.
Oman: The Oman Times reports on green turtle nesting and tourism at Ras al-Hadd in Oman (certified as U.S.-equivalent in turtle protection).
Belize: Oceana reports on hawskbills.
Policy
The State Department announces 2021 shrimp trade certifications: Oman, Australia, Belize joined by Bahamas, Malaysia, Fiji, et al.
The CITES (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species) homepage.
Sea turtle protection page from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Litigation
A famous WTO dispute of the 1990s, “DS-58”, wound up validating the U.S. TED rule against complaints.
And last…
Mencius, with the brief passage on nets, excluder devices and turtles in Chapter A3.
In A New Voyage Round the World (1699), English professional navigator, part-time pirate, and amateur naturalist William Dampier discusses the massive Caribbean green turtle populations of the 17th century:
“I heard of a monstrous green turtle once taken at Port Royal in the Bay of Campeachy that was four foot deep from the back to the belly, and the belly six foot broad. Captain Roch’s son, of about nine or ten years of age, went in it as in a boat on board his father’s ship, about a quarter mile from the shore. … One thing is very strange and remarkable in these Creatures; that in the breeding-time they leave for two or three months their common Haunts, where they feed most of the year, and resort to other places only to lay their Eggs: and ‘tis not thought that they eat any thing during this Season: so both the He’s and the She’s grow very lean. … Altho’ multitudes 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.”
Dampier’s New Voyage, with the turtle passage in Chapter 5.
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 ProgressiveEconomy 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.
