Should warming continue under moderate climate-change scenarios, leave alone drastic ones, some sea-turtle nesting habitats, including those of the olive ridleys that visit India every year, will be completely flooded by 2050. In more extreme emissions scenarios, they could completely vanish, a new study has found.
An international team of researchers, from Australia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, the U.K. and the U.S., combined freely available digital elevation models for continental and remote island beaches across different ocean basins, with projections of field data and sea-level rise, to examine the possible impact on five of the world’s seven living sea-turtle species. These are the leatherback turtles ( Dermochelys coriacea), loggerhead turtles ( Caretta caretta), hawksbill turtles ( Eretmochelys imbricata), olive ridley turtles ( Lepidochelys olivacea), and green turtles ( Chelonia mydas).
Of these, on the IUCN Red List, the leatherback, loggerhead, and olive ridley turtles are classified as ‘vulnerable’, the green turtles as ‘endangered’, and the hawksbill turtles as ‘critically endangered‘.
