Great Barrier Reef Marine Turtles Can We Help

Image by richard ling via FlickrThe Great Barrier Reef Marine Turtles Can We Help?
It seems that we can!
You see these lovely creatures need our help and are dieing for some real crappy reasons!
You see turtles just love to eat jelly fish!
Now they see rubbish as food such as plastic bags and cigarette butts and these kill our lovely turtles.
The plastic bags they think are jelly fish and same with the cigarette butts.
It only takes about 4 cigarette butts to kill a turtle and yes, only one plastic bag!
Watch the video below and then scroll down to see the article I have provided!

Snorkeling with Turtle Eating Jellyfish Great Barrier Reef.m4v
www.facebook.com/snorkelling One of the friendly juvenile Green Turtles in the famous Turtle Bay is feeding on Moon Jellyfish. Webelieve the best snorkeling in the world is a coral reef adventure on a Great Barrier Reef snorkeling trip with Wavelengt...

The Curious Turtle Snorkeling Great Barrier Reef
www.facebook.com/snorkelling Despite constant trespassing and harassment of turtles by people in our famous Turtle Bay site, there are still 3 individual turtles who are still friendly towards snorkellers. Here, Big Girl takes an interest in the came...


The health and conservation of the Great Barrier Reef’s marine turtles is the focus of a new partnership launched in Townsville today between James Cook University and WWF, the global conservation organisation.

The partnership comes at a time when turtles on the Great Barrier Reef are facing continued threats from loss of food, water pollution, disease, entanglement in fishing nets and coastal development.

“Sadly extreme weather events earlier this year in Queensland have taken a serious toll on green turtles with the loss of food sources in many areas adding to existing threats from net entanglement and disease,” said WWF-Australia CEO Dermot O’Gorman.

“This has inspired us to seek new ways of working with leading science and turtle health agencies like James Cook University so we can ensure the Great Barrier Reef remains one of the world’s best sanctuaries for green turtles.”


The partnership will see James Cook University and WWF-Australia working together to provide care for sick and injured turtles, conduct vital research into turtle disease and health, and promote the establishment of protected areas where turtles can be safe from fishing nets and coastal development.



Dr Ellen Ariel, Senior Lecturer at JCU's School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, said the main thrust of the university’s involvement would be research into the plight of the turtles and how best to help, treat, and protect them and their habitats – now and into the future.

“The university has a world-wide reputation in the area of marine sciences,” she said, “and in situations such as exist at present we can access and initiate research across a number of faculties and disciplines.”

Many inshore sea grass meadows – an important source of food for green turtles – were smothered with sediment and pollution after widespread flooding earlier this year. The subsequent impact of Cyclone Yasi added to the problem and removed many of the remaining sea grasses.

Between January and mid-September this year, there have been nearly 1000 turtles found stranded, most of them dead, compared with 538 for the same period last year. The few turtles that are found alive are often emaciated and require emergency care to bring them back to health.

Dr Ariel said that Reef HQ was doing a great job in looking after the distressed turtles, but extra facilities and resources were needed in order to support their efforts.

“With the help of WWF we will be in a position to assist with the overflow of starving turtles – particularly in the present situation where the numbers are overwhelmingly high,” she said.

WWF-Australia contact:

Charlie Stevens, WWF Media Manager - Queensland, 0424 649 689.

Support WWF's efforts to protect our marine turtles
View Original article here!

I hope you enjoyed my video blog post "Great Barrier Reef Marine Turtles Can We Help"? Please share this article with other within your Facebook friends and Twitter feed to get the word out there!

Also if you are a smoker please consider the turtle and the environment and bin those butts!
Have a great day
Marty