Sea Turtle Nesting Beach Conservation

Seven species of sea turtles face extinction threats including beach habitat loss, fishing bycatch, and plastic pollution, with individual turtles enduring significant suffering from human impacts.

Key Facts

Sea turtles have existed for 110 million years but face extinction in our lifetime
Female sea turtles return to their birth beaches to nest, sometimes traveling 1,400 miles
Beach lighting disorients hatchlings that follow light toward roads instead of the sea
Plastic ingestion kills approximately 1,000 sea turtles per year in US waters alone
Sea turtle bycatch in longline fishing affects 150,000 individuals annually in the Pacific

Welfare Considerations

Individual sea turtle welfare involves multiple human-caused threats. Entanglement in fishing gear causes drowning — a prolonged death as air-breathing animals struggle to surface. Plastic ingestion causes bowel obstruction and slow starvation. Beach lighting causes hatchlings to travel away from the ocean, dying of dehydration or predation. Fibropapillomatosis, a debilitating disease linked to pollution and degraded habitats, causes tumors on eyes and flippers. Each of these causes individual suffering at scale.

What You Can Do

Turn off or redirect beach lights during sea turtle nesting season (May-October in the US)
Remove beach furniture from the sand at night during nesting season
Support sea turtle conservation organizations and beach monitoring programs
Reduce single-use plastic consumption to decrease ocean plastic loads
Choose fishing operators committed to bycatch reduction technologies like circle hooks