Sea Turtle Sanctuary Has Survived 40 Years. Climate Change May Kill It.

Against long odds and initially strong opposition, a pristine marine preserve in the Philippines has thrived for decades under the care of local fishermen. Warming waters threaten the achievement. From a report: The large green sea turtles used to be terrified of humans, scuttling away as fast as they could. "When the turtles saw people, it was like they saw a ghost," said Mario Pascobello, a resident of Apo Island in the Philippines. "In the old days, they were being slaughtered here," he added, with the island's fishermen feasting on their flesh and their eggs. Now, the endangered green turtles, largely herbivorous, peacefully graze in the shallows off Apo's coast, unbothered by the fishermen, who share the waters with them. But if the turtles are no longer menaced by the fishermen here, they do face another man-made threat: climate change. "Climate change increasing the temperatures of coastal areas will kill corals and fish larvae," said Angel Alcala, a marine biologist who started visiting the island in the 1970s. "Typhoons usually reached the Negros area only once in 10 to 15 years before, but now every four or five years a typhoon hits Apo." The community is still rehabilitating from the last typhoon, and in recent years it has had to restore parts of its reef damaged in bleaching events, when overheated seawater causes coral to expel the plantlike organism that live inside them, which causes the corals to not only turn white but also puts them at greater risk of death. Apo, a tiny volcanic speck roughly in the center of the Philippines archipelago, is home to a pristine marine sanctuary in an area known as the Amazon of the Sea because of its biodiversity. The waters around the tiny island are thought to be home to around 400 species of coral.

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