Penyu Comel
Boating alert!
When boating, stay alert and avoid sea turtles. Propeller and collision impacts from boats and ships can result in injury and death of sea turtles. Also, stay in channels and avoid running in seagrass beds to protect this important habitat from prop scarring and damage. Avoid anchoring boats in seagrass beds and coral reefs, which serve as important foraging and resting habitats for
Join a conservation club.
People can join any conservation club. They can become a volunteer to any programme organized by the club involving turtle conservation. For example such as SEATRU.
SEATRU: http://seatru.wordpress.com/activities/volunteer-program/
Educate future gnerations
We can educate the future generations, to be precise the children, the importance and threats to most of the endangered species, which is turtles in our case. This ensure that when they are older, they will understand what must be done to save the turtles.
How the society can help
Don’t disturb them
If you encounter a turtle on the beach at night, remain quiet, still, and at a distance, otherwise she may become frightened and return to the ocean without nesting. Leave the tracks left by turtles undisturbed. Researchers use the tracks to identify the species of turtle that nested and to find and mark the nests for protection.
Don’t pollute the sea
Properly dispose of your garbage. Turtles may mistake plastic bags, styrofoam, and trash floating in the water as food and die when this trash blocks their intestines.if there is any celebration, we should not use helium balloon to release. Just like plastic trash, balloons end up in the ocean, especially when released near the coast. Sea turtles mistakenly eat the balloons and die.besides that, we should remove recreational equipment, such as lounge chairs, cabanas, umbrellas, and boats, from the beach at night. Their presence can deter nesting attempts and interfere with the seaward journey of hatchlings.
How turtles are conserved
Protect the nests
Sea turtles and their nests are protected by the Endangered Species Act and the Florida Marine Protection Act. We can protect the turtle by placing fence around the nest. This would avoid the eggs from being eaten by predators such as alligators. Besides that, we can also relocate eggs laid too close to the water to a safer area.
Protecting sea turtles legally
Actually the marine turtles in Malaysia are being protected under the Fisheries ACT 1985. It is a federal act relating to the protection of fishing and fisheries in Malaysia not forgetting turtles. Besides that, the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 lists several levels of protection for endangered species of wild animals such as mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects, but completely omitted all species of terrapins and also tortoises. Among states in Malaysia have legislation related to the exploitation, licensing for egg collection and possession or killing of marine turtles are Kedah, Kelantan, Johor, Melaka and Negeri Sembilan. Furtheremore, the Terengganu Turtle Enactment 1951 (Amendment 1987) provides a whole range of protection, i.e. ban of sale of leatherback turtle eggs, and penalties, i.e. RM3,000 fine and up to one year’s jail for killing, possessing, removing or destroying eggs and failure to furnish statistics (in the case of licensed egg-collectors), and RM1,000 fine or jail up to six months for injuring or disturbing nesting terrapins. But these provisions have never been evoked. Therefore federal law protecting the turtles should be made and adopted by all states to ensure the survival of these species.
Lighting
We must not flash heavy lighting at the beach during night time especially during turtle egg laying season. This is because turtles like to land at dark beaches where there is less disturbance and noise. If heavy lighting is flashed, there are chances that the turtle might not lay egg there and leave the place. Moreover, we must also close blinds and draperies in oceanfront rooms at night during the nesting season to keep indoor lighting from reaching the beach. Furtheremore, we should use our natural vision when walking on the beach at night. The use of flashlights and flash photography can deter turtles from coming ashore to nest or cause them to abort nesting attempts. Do not construct campfires on the beach. Sea turtle hatchlings are known to be attracted to the light emitted by campfires and crawl into fires and die.
Managing Sex Ratios
When nesting the eggs, we must make sure that the ratio of male to female is balanced. By doing this way, we can ensure that the chances for the turtles to lay egg is higher in the future as there are males and females to mate.
