Are Your Activities Accidentally Harming Turtles?

Sea turtles, ungainly on land but graceful in the water, are threatened with extinction by human activities that either injure the turtles or damage their habitats.

A loggerhead turtle tries for an early escape from one of many containers filled with sea turtles on a Florida beach on April 7.

Fifty-two sea turtles (including members of loggerhead, Kemp's ridley and green sea turtle species) that were stranded and rescued off the Massachusetts coast in autumn 2012 were released in April at Florida’s Little Talbot Island State Park after arriving in an SUV caravan. Staff and volunteers from the New England Aquarium’s Animal Care Center and the National Aquarium in Baltimore accompanied the turtles.

All sea turtles occurring in U.S. waters are protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Major threats to sea turtles include destruction and alteration of nesting and foraging habitats, incidental capture in commercial and recreational fisheries, entanglement in marine debris and vessel strikes. U.S. regulations restrict certain commercial fishing gear (gillnets, longlines, pound nets and trawls) known to cause significant bycatch of sea turtles.