Marine turtles face multiple threats including plastic pollution, climate change, bycatch, and hunting, creating welfare challenges across their global ocean and nesting beach habitats.
Marine turtle welfare spans multiple life stages each with specific threats. Nesting adults face harassment and hunting on beaches in some regions. Hatchlings emerging from nests are disoriented by artificial lighting and may crawl toward roads rather than the sea. Juvenile and adult turtles at sea face bycatch entanglement causing drowning, longline hook injuries, and propeller strikes. Plastic ingestion causes chronic welfare harm through gut blockage and false satiation. The welfare of individual turtles is closely linked to conservation outcomes - the same interventions that reduce mortality improve individual welfare. Beach lighting management, bycatch mitigation, and plastic reduction are among the highest priority interventions.