In this video Jennie Gilbert, the Director of the Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre, talks about how the centre rescues turtles. We visited Jennie in 2016.

“Within Australia, marine turtles are predominantly found in the waters of Queensland, Northern Territory and north Western Australia, although there are a few sightings of most species recorded around south-eastern Australia. Leatherback Turtles are known to forage and migrate throughout Australia. There are only a few large nesting aggregations of the Green, Hawksbill and Loggerhead Turtles left in the world, and Australia has some of the largest aggregations in the Indo-Pacific region. Flatback Turtles nest only in Australia and forage over the Australian continental shelf into continental waters off Papua New Guinea and Indonesia”. Commonwealth of Australia

Over countless centuries turtles have swum the world’s oceans and pulled themselves onshore to lay their eggs in the beach sand. About seven weeks later the hatchlings making their perilous journey back into the ocean. A successful group of animals if there ever was one. Today things are very different, turtles everywhere are in deep trouble.

Six of the seven species of turtle that survive today are found in Australian waters. These are the Hawksbill Turtle Eretmochelys imbricate, the Flatback Turtle Natator depressus, the Green Turtle Chelonia mydas, the Leatherback Turtle Dermochelys coriacea, the Loggerhead Turtle Caretta caretta and the Olive Ridley Turtle Lepidochelys olivacea. 

Of the six species of turtle found in Australian waters the Loggerhead Turtle, the Olive Ridley Turtle and the Leatherback Turtle are listed as endangered, the remaining three species are listed as vulnerable. The Great Barrier Reef is home to all six of Australia’s turtle species.

The seventh species and the turtle that does not live in Australian waters is the Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle Lepidochelys kempii, its habitat includes the Gulf of Mexico, along the coast of Florida and up the Atlantic coast including the waters off New England. The Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle would not have been helped by BP’s devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. Of the five species of turtle found in the Gulf, the Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle is the most endangered, sadly almost 500 of the 600 plus dead turtles found after the oil spill were Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtles. The stranding of turtles following the spill continued at high levels.

So global action is required to help turtles in trouble, and trouble is precisely what is happening in Cairns, North Queensland.

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Jennie Gilbert is a vet, co-founder, researcher and a director of the Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre. Jennie is also the co-owner of the Marlin Coast Veterinary Hospital. Jennie’s energy and dedication and skills as a vet have saved the lives of a large number of turtles.

The Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre opened in Cairns in 2000, the new turtle rehabilitation facility at Fitzroy Island opened at the beginning of 2013. Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre is a non-profit voluntary organisation dedicated to the rehabilitation of sick and injured turtles. The turtle rehabilitation centres are responding to the increasing numbers of injured turtles found within the Great Barrier Reef system. The centre specialises in treating five species, Green, Hawksbill, Olive Ridley, Loggerhead and Flatback Turtles.

In Australia threats to turtle populations come from many things and these include ghostnets (these are the discarded fishing nets that float the oceans entangling anything that crosses their path), habitat loss including damage to seagrass beds, pollution, the plasticisation of the oceans, the increase in shipping activity from mining developments and pleasure boat strikes, climate change related events, coastal developments, pollution and predation of eggs by feral animals such as pigs. Indigenous communities can also play a major role in helping to preserve these most precious animals. 

Poor water quality is also a threat to turtles as this means a compromised immune system that leads to a range of illnesses. In the busy reef around Cairns one danger for turtles is that when they surface to breathe, they risk being hit by a boat or a jet ski.

Because so much of the plastic we throw away ends up in the ocean, every time a turtle tries to eat something it faces a potential danger, a floating plastic bag mistaken for a tasty jellyfish, the accidental intake of small plastic objects as turtles graze the seagrass beds and the fine particulate and broken down plastics are all choking and poisoning our turtle friends. Helium party balloons are proving to be particularly troublesome and a completely needless way in which to make animals suffer so badly.

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Many of the injuries to these gentle and ancient creatures of the sea are horrific and hugely painful. You will notice from the film clip that turtles love to have their shell, both carapace (upper surface) and plastron (lower surface) scratched so this means their shells are sensitive and therefore even injuries to the shell are very painful.

One of the most important things you can do to help is to think about the way you use and dispose of plastic. It is very easy to take as hopping bag with you when you shop, an idea that appears lost on many of the shoppers we see in Queensland, including the tourists who travel vast distances to see the Great Barrier Reef and the turtles that inhabit it.

You will find more stories about the impact of plastics and ghostnets on marine life in the blog section of the Creative cowboy films website.

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Our thanks also to the community of Pormpuraaw, Cape York, for the nets they have collected from the shore and for their ghostnet artworks.

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