Heithaus MR, Alcoverro T, Arthur R, Burkholder DA, Coates KA, Christianen MJA, Kelkar N, Manuel SA, Wirsing AJ, Kenworthy WJ and Fourqurean JW (2014) Seagrasses in the age of sea turtle conservation and shark overfishing. Front. Mar. Sci. 1:28. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2014.00028
Background
Successful green sea turtle population recovery programs may be linked to sea grass populations in some ecosystems. For example, if sea turtle populations increase and are naturally maintained at historic levels, it could improve sea grass meadow health. Herbivorous sea turtles feeding on sea grasses helps ecosystem dynamics by reducing sea grass biomass and reducing sediment hypoxia. Sea turtle populations should be controlled by predation by sharks, but their populations are decreasing due to overfishing. As a result, some recovery populations of sea turtles are exceeding historic levels and their excess grazing could threaten the survival of sea grass meadows. Dying sea grass meadows could seriously damage an ecosystem and reverse sea turtle conservation efforts.
Methods
Studies focused on successful sea turtle populations in Bermuda (Northwest Atlantic Ocean), Shark Bay (Western Australia, Eastern Indian Ocean), Derawan (Indonesia), and Lakshadweep (India, Central Indian Ocean). In each study researchers compared sea grass grazing by sea turtles in a low risk predation area with sea grass grazing in a high risk predation area.
Results
Results varied spatially but there was an overall trend between over grazing and destroyed sea grass meadows. Over grazing was observed to impact density, heights, productivity, community composition, and persistence of sea grasses in the study areas. Shark populations between the sites vary so it is difficult for researchers to determine their exact role in sea turtle density, however it was observed that in areas with low shark populations, like Bermuda and Derawan, sea turtles had a much greater role in declining sea grass meadows compared to areas where shark predation was high risk (Figure 1).
Importance
Sea grass health is important because sea grasses are key players in ecosystems, influencing water quality and erosion, and because they are a carbon sink. Sea grass populations are already threatened by poor coastal management, and as discussed in this paper, may also by threatened by trophic dynamics. Ecosystem management and top down forcing in populations are important to understand so that the fate of sea grasses may be monitored as the climate and oceans change
Hello, welcome to Oceanbites! My name is Annie, I’m a marine research scientist who has been lucky to have had many roles in my neophyte career, including graduate student, laboratory technician, research associate, and adjunct faculty. Research topics I’ve been involved with are paleoceanographic nutrient cycling, lake and marine geochemistry, biological oceanography, and exploration. My favorite job as a scientist is working in the laboratory and the field because I love interacting with my research! Some of my favorite field memories are diving 3000-m in ALVIN in 2014, getting to drive Jason while he was on the seafloor in 2017, and learning how to generate high resolution bathymetric maps during a hydrographic field course in 2019!
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