He views the nation’s restrictions on plastic optimistically, but they are only the first step in reducing sea waste and conserving the planet’s oceans, said Liu Hung-chang (劉烘昌), a Taiwanese land crab specialist whose discovery of a female sea turtle laying eggs in a pile of debris on Christmas Day last year shocked the world.
Last Christmas, Liu and five young Taiwanese, who were on a working holiday in Australia, went to Greta Beach on Christmas Island at night to observe the egg-laying habits of sea turtles, Liu said.
As soon as they stepped out of the car, they were shocked by a horrific sight: Of the five young sea turtles they saw, four were already dead or extremely frail, and only one looked like it would survive, Liu said.
Photo: Screen grab from the Internet
The group was stunned that the hatchlings had died because the amount of debris on the beach had made it difficult for them to get back to the ocean, Liu said.
The six of them stayed at the same location waiting for female sea turtles that needed to lay their eggs to come to shore, Liu said.
At about midnight on Dec. 26, they discovered a female sea turtle on the shore, but she was struggling to dig a nest in a pile of debris, Liu said.
He sent the others home and waited alone until 3:30am, when the sea turtle had finished burying her nesting hole with sand after she had laid her eggs, he said.
It was low tide by then and the rocks in the intertidal zone had been exposed, Liu said.
The female sea turtle might have needed to wait until the tide had risen after the sunrise to return to the ocean, Liu said, adding that this would have increased the amount of time she was exposed to the sun.
Liu has been traveling to Christmas Island since 2013 to conduct research on land crabs and has seen garbage patches on its beaches for many years, but this was the first time the situation had been so severe that it has affected the egg-laying behavior of green sea turtles, he said.
He recorded the sight that day and posted the video on the Internet to encourage the island’s residents to clean the waste and driftwood together, Liu said, adding that he never thought his video would capture the attention of BBC Earth.
The video reportedly received 1.2 million views within half a day of being uploaded.
Every year, local people go and clean up the beach, but there is more debris than they can handle, Liu said.
When he is on the island, he tries to clean up Greta Beach, but because of the ocean current, large amounts of uncontrollable sea debris still end up on its shores, he added.
Traveling along the ocean currents, there is no coast the world’s sea waste cannot reach, Liu said.
He hopes to use this opportunity to raise awareness, Liu said, adding that although the sight of sea turtles laying eggs in a “waste beach” is shocking, in reality even more organisms have fates that are far worse than that of the sea turtle.
For example, the development plan for Kaohsiung’s Matou Mountain (馬頭山) would impact the habitat of many organisms, Liu said.
In 2015, a waste-processing company proposed a plan to build an industrial waste landfill at the foot of Matou Mountain. The plan has since sparked controversy among the area’s residents.
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