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GrrlScientist is an evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, aviculturist, birder and freelance science and nature writer. A native of the Pacific Northwest, she relocated from Seattle to NYC with her parrots after earning a BS in Microbiology (emphasis in Virology) and PhD in Zoology (Ornithology) from the University of Washington. In NYC, she was the Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History for two years, pursuing part of her "dream" research project by reconstructing a molecular phylogeny of the parrots of the South Pacific islands. GrrlScientist and her five parrots are currently relocating to Germany, where she will continue writing her blog while also writing a book and learning German. (Meanwhile, her parrots will continue to nibble on her extensive personal library.) If you appreciate GrrlScientist's writing, you can help pay her living expenses by hiring her to "blog" your conference, speak at your club or write articles for your publication (or by clicking on the Paypal button below). If you read an essay on this blog that you especially enjoyed, please nominate it for inclusion in OpenLab2009.
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Topic Categories: Image of the Day • Reptiles
Posted on: June 19, 2007 2:59 PM, by "GrrlScientist"
tags: sea turtle, Olive-Ridley hatchling, Image of the Day
An Olive Ridley hatchling struggles out of its egg on a French Guianan beach. Egg collection and snaring in fishing nets have brought the turtle's population down by 95% in 40 years. Turtle protection has been under discussion at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species meeting.
Image: Roger Leguen, WWF [larger]
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Comments
This poor little guy should still be snug underground in the nest at this point!
Posted by: CCP | June 19, 2007 3:56 PM
Worked with Kemps ridley one year with my Girl Scout troup. Guess I will have to blog about that sometime...need a slide scanner though. Turtles are my talisman.
Posted by: Tabor | June 19, 2007 5:13 PM
While travelling in China with a school group in 1985, we ran across a row of restaurants in Shanghai with tanks outside -- as well as the usual cages of chickens, ducks and rabbits, these had tanks of everything from sea cucumbers to sea turtles. I recognised a few species which shouldn't be there, and got a bit upset; I wanted to get both photographs and names, and find somewhere to complain, not that I was under any impression that this would do much good.
One of the other teachers was horrified. "Oh no!" she said, "Surely they aren't going to actually eat those animals!" She appealed to our government-appointed "guiede", who was required to accompany us everywhere, and he was fast to reassure her.
"Of course not!" he said. "No, those animals aren't to eat, they are being sold as pets."
Pets. Yep. Sure. Outside restaurants. Places where the patrons came out and pointed at the animal they wanted, the animal was carried in by its neck or feet, and the patron later reappeared looking well-fed and replete, and no animal in sight. Mmyep.
The other teacher bought it, hook, line and sinker, if I may use an apt metaphor. "See!" she said. "They aren't going to be killed! People wouldn't do that!" ...and she was NOT to be persuaded otherwise.
Then again, there were a couple of teachers on that trip who seemed to have a rather tenuous grasp of reality.
I don't want to see any more species disappear. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for these guys, and my donations to WWF flowing.
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | June 20, 2007 9:15 AM