Wayward southern sea turtle caught/released off SFO Bay
Interesting article and photo. This turtle is normally seen much more south.
https://seaturtles.org/newssection/salty-lady-hooks-sea-turt...
Excerpt:
Pacific green turtles are mostly found in Mexico and south, though there is a small population that resides near the power plant in San Diego Bay.
The nearest significant nesting population is found in the Mexican State of Michoacan, more than 2,000 miles south of San Francisco. They are listed
as ‘Endangered’ under the U.S. Endangered Species Act due to overharvesting of adults and eggs. Green turtles are long-lived, reaching sexual
maturity between 20-50 years of age with adult females returning to their natal beach to lay their eggs.
“Finding an endangered green turtle in the cold waters off San Francisco is extremely unusual, even during warmer water temperatures during an El
Nino event,” said Todd Steiner, biologist and executive director of Turtle Island Restoration Network. “While Pacific leatherbacks are known to feed
off the coast here in summer and fall, green turtles prefer much warmer waters of the eastern Pacific.”
According to the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service Recovery Plan for U.S. Pacific Populations of the East Pacific Green Turtle (1998), “As late
as the 1960s the East Pacific green turtle was still abundant in its major nesting grounds in North America; that is the beaches of Colola and Maruata
Bay, Michoacán, Mexico. It is estimated that in the late 1960s, 500 – 1,000 females nested nightly in Colola during peak season… In the northern
Mexican feeding grounds East Pacific green turtles were first heavily fished at the turn of the century, when an estimated 1,000 East Pacific green
turtles per month were shipped from the Pacific side of Baja California (Magdalena Bay, Scammon’s Lagoon, Tortugas Bay) and Gulf of California (Bahia
de los Angeles) to San Diego and San Francisco in California, United States (O’Donnell 1974 in Cliffton et al. 1982). By the 1930′s, the market
for sea turtle meat had decreased in the United States, while in Mexico – especially in the border towns of Tijuana, Mexicali and Nogales, and the
major cities in Baja California and Sonora – the demand for turtle meat grew steadily. From 1956 to 1963, East Pacific green turtles harvested in the
northern Mexican feeding grounds were the most important component of the Mexican turtle fishery, with a total live weight production of 3,430 metric
tons (Groombridge and Luxmoore 1989). In the early 1970s large numbers of overwintering East Pacific green turtles were discovered near Tiburon Island
in the Gulf of California. The torpid turtles were lying motionless at depths of 10-30m (Felger et al. 1976). Intensive hunting of the easily caught
overwintering turtles began in 1975, when five boats were landing 4-5 metric tons of turtles per week from late November to early March (Cliffton et
al. 1982). Overwintering sites were successively decimated and the East Pacific green turtle was “virtually extirpated” from the Gulf of California by
the late 1970s (Cliffton et al. 1982). According to Cliffton (in litt. to J. Woody, 5 May 1991) who conducted a 30-day exploration of the Midriff
Islands region in the summer of 1990, adult East Pacific green turtles were extremely scarce. Cliffton quotes native informants as stating that most
of the East Pacific green turtles remaining in the Upper Gulf of California are juveniles weighing an average of about 20 kg.”
[Edited on 9-14-2014 by Whale-ista]
\"Probably the airplanes will bring week-enders from Los Angeles before long, and the beautiful poor bedraggled old town will bloom with a
Floridian ugliness.\" (John Steinbeck, 1940, discussing the future of La Paz, BCS, Mexico)
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