. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. between Cape Lookout and Topsail Island and at Southport and Long Beach. All but one were logger- heads, the other, a green turtle. The animals bore sores and lesions on their skin and shells and carried extremely high numbers of barnacles, an indication of poor health. Some of the animals were so underweight that their undershells were concave, a sign to Boettcher that they were sick for a very long time. The turtles from both strandings were sent to the North Carolina State University College of Veterina
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. between Cape Lookout and Topsail Island and at Southport and Long Beach. All but one were logger- heads, the other, a green turtle. The animals bore sores and lesions on their skin and shells and carried extremely high numbers of barnacles, an indication of poor health. Some of the animals were so underweight that their undershells were concave, a sign to Boettcher that they were sick for a very long time. The turtles from both strandings were sent to the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medi- cine for analysis. Andy Stamper, a resident in zoological medicine, says the evidence doesn't support a human- related cause of death, but he also doesn't dismiss the possibility of toxic poisoning. Testing for pesticides or other pollutants in a turtle's body is complex and time-consuming, he says, and the levels that would be lethal for a sea turtle have not yet been fixed. One effect that toxins could have on turtles is to compromise their im- mune systems, leaving them vulnerable to parasites they normally fend off. Also, a toxin may depress the immune system, thereby allowing bacteria to invade, Stamper says, and cause the kinds of symptoms found on the ne- crotic turtles. Finally, the animals could have traveled through areas af- fected by red tide or a similar phenom- enon elsewhere and then, because their bodies incorporate toxins very slowly, suffered the effects when they came to North Carolina waters. "A lot of research needs to be done to determine the interactions of the environment and pollutants in the environment with the turtles," Stamper says. "It's very frustrating because everyone is concerned about the human interactions with sea turtles, and we haven't even determined all the natural causes of ; Another of those possible natural causes is a parasitic fluke. The turtles in both natural mortality events last year had
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookcollectionunclibra, booksubjectoceanography
