Even though this year has been bad with various crises every month, it has been amazing in terms of the various scientific discoveries every day like the discovery of great white shark fossils. The COVID-19 has created for various scientific researches as the governments of each country have started investing largely in their science sector. Today, researchers in Australia found out that the world’s largest population of nesting turtles is nearly twice as big as previously estimated by them after drones did a better and efficient survey of the animals.
Australian scientists recently determined that there were about 64,000 green turtles waiting to lay eggs on Raine Island, which is a vegetated coral cay on the outer edge of the great barrier reef which was larger than what they estimated earlier. earlier the turtles were counted manually which is why the number was less than the drone count by a factor of 1.73. the research is good for figuring out the reasons for the decline of the green turtles which are already an endangered species.
The green is one of the largest sea turtles and is the only herbivore among the different turtle species. Since the mass production of plastics in the 1940s, the number of these green turtles have gone down because of the devastating impact of plastic in their habitat with turtles eating this plastic and sometimes getting stuck in their limbs. Green turtles eat seagrasses and algae which also helps to keep the seagrass beds but with the plastic in the ocean, it obstructs the growth of these algae which then becomes the reason for starvation for these turtles. These green turtles continue to be traded and hunted mainly for human consumption and the trade of their limbs in the black market is also profitable. Ten and thousands of these turtles are being harvested every year which is the reason they have become endangered. Hence such researches are important to know the migration routes of these turtles and to help in their protection.
