Most sea turtles that live near Brazil’s second largest city are no longer getting nasty tumors that kill them, after Brazil stopped dumping so much sewage into the bay they live in. Two years ago, three-quarters of the turtles had these tumors, but now, less than half do. Reuters reports:
Sea turtles in the Guanabara Bay of Rio de Janeiro are getting healthier after struggling for years with a tumor disease that hampers their movement, sight and feeding, and ultimately leads to their death.
Scientists said it came after authorities made an effort to clean up the water of the natural harbor that shapes the identity of the region. Research has linked fibropapillomatosis, a benign tumor in sea turtles, to both a virus and environmental factors. Surrounded by a dense urban population, Guanabara Bay was once a nursery for marine life but has over the years suffered from sewage and other garbage being dumped there. In 2022, scientists found that three quarters of sea turtles there were carrying the tumors….
Alexandre Bianchini, a vice president at Brazilian water and sewage treatment company Aegea, said some 2 billion reais ($356.42 million) had been invested into cleaning up the water in the area. “Now, nature responds,” he said.
While the entire state is seeing a record number of sea turtle nests this season, the numbers have tripled since last year in Space Coast, Florida, a 72-mile span of beach on Florida’s central east coast near Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral…
So far in 2023, Space Coast, has recorded a whopping 20,545 in loggerhead nests, 31,893 green sea turtle nests, 61 leatherback nests and three Kemp’s Ridley nests, with a total count of more than 52,500 nests in that area alone…At one point over the summer, the region was seeing more than 300 nests pop up a night…Green turtles have seen the largest increases out of the species that nest in Florida…The Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge saw a 195% increase in green sea turtles, one of the most threatened species of turtles. By July 21, researchers counted 13,683 green turtle nests at the preserve, compared to 4,638 nests during the same time last year, according to the organizations….The entire state is seeing massive increases in turtle nests…There have been 212,000 sea turtle nests recorded around the state, and the nesting season is not over yet…Last year, the state saw 151,000 turtle nests.
Fish species are rebounding off the coast of California due to their young finding a sanctuary in abandoned oil rigs:
According to a 2014 study…the rigs were some of the most “productive” ocean habitats in the world…The research showed the rigs to be about 27 times more productive than the natural rocky reefs in California….Subsequent studies showed that some species of rockfish produce 10 to 100 times more eggs and larvae at these platforms than at natural reefs….In some cases, the platforms are actually important to the populations of fish as a whole…in the slow-growing rockfish bocaccio, a commercially important but overfished species, the rigs were home to one-fifth of the average number of juvenile fish that survive each year….
