Halfway between South America and Africa, in the immensity of the Atlantic Ocean, a small volcanic point emerges that is the ascension island. For centuries, this piece of land was the scene of a systematic massacre, but today it represents one of the greatest success stories of marine conservation in the 21st century, culminating last October with a historic announcement that the green turtle has officially gone from being “endangered” to being classified as “least concern.”
His story. To understand the magnitude of the Ascension phenomenon, you must first understand the journey since each season, thousands of green turtles They travel 2,300 kilometers from the coasts of Brazil to this remote island to spawnthat is, release their eggs. But… How do they manage to find this small island in an ocean as enormous as the Atlantic?
A GPS. The famous biologist Archie Carr proposed in his day that these creatures use a kind of “olfactory GPS”, with which they were capable of find chemical fingerprints dissolved in the ocean currents that emanate from the island. Although the exact mechanics remain the subject of study, since genetic analyzes based on mitochondrial DNA leave no doubt that there are perfectly differentiated Atlantic populations and that of Ascension has a unique signature.
In fact, studies indicate that turtles born in Ascensión travel throughout the American continent, representing between 43% and 47% of those captured on the coasts of Uruguay and entering the Patagonian Sea.
A dark past. Since its discovery in 1501, Portuguese and British sailors saw Ascension not as a sanctuary, but as an all-you-can-eat buffet, as has been masterfully documented. in works as Ascension: The Story of a South Atlantic Island by Duff Hart-Davis.
For centuries, common practices were “flipping” where sailors literally turned turtles over on the beach, immobilizing them to keep them alive with their fresh meat for months. Here there are historical testimonies such as that of chaplain John Ovington in 1691 who recounts the industrialized slaughter of these reptiles, which were sent alive to England to satisfy the demand for “turtle soup.” Something that brought the species to the brink of extinction.
A turning point. It arrived in 1977, and coincides with the moment it began control and monitoring of this species on nesting beaches, reversing centuries of human impact. And the results indicate that while in 1977 3,752 nests were counted annually, today the island hosts more than 25,000 nests each year.
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