A Sea Full of Turtles

May 27, 2024
In this stimulating report, nature writer Streever (In Oceans Deep) recounts traveling around Mexico’s Gulf of California to interview the fishers, nonprofit directors, scientists, and volunteers who are working to protect endangered sea turtles. Surveying the threats facing the reptiles, Streever notes that the black market for turtle meat has boomed since Mexico banned its consumption in 1990, that beachgoers sometimes unwittingly crush buried nests underfoot, and that tens of thousands of sea turtles are estimated to die each year after getting trapped in fishing nets and drowning. Among those striving to save the turtles are veterinarian Elsa Galindo, who runs a program that relocates nests away from well-trafficked beach areas, and Agnese Mancini, a scientist who evaluates the effectiveness of turtle hunting bans for a nonprofit organization. Streever sometimes drifts off topic, going on tangents about his fondness for Jainism (a religion that espouses an extreme form of “do no harm,” to the extent that some adherents refuse to step in puddles for fear of killing microbes) and whether it’s unethical for humans to continue reproducing at current rates. Still, the profiles of individuals leading conservation efforts offer reason for hope even as they make clear the direness of the sea turtle’s situation. Animal lovers will be galvanized. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary.

May 1, 2024
An aquatic ecologist recounts his search for reasons for optimism in the face of looming extinction crises. When Covid-19 lockdowns closed seaports, Streever, author of Cold and Heat, and his wife, a marine biologist, were at sea aboard their restored sailboat Rocinante. Cleared into a Mexican port, they spent the next several years sailing in the Gulf of California, off the Baja peninsula, where five species of sea turtles now exist. Noting that "engaging with those who make a living from the sea is a necessary part of the conservation movement," the author interviewed the volunteer "turtlers" who find and protect turtle nests, nonprofit professionals working to promote biodiversity, a veterinarian who performed a necropsy on a dead turtle, and local fishermen. He found that the gulf area suffers from "inadequate enforcement of mostly existing regulations and a lack of opportunities for people aside from fishing." Though the region is "one of the five most productive marine ecosystems in the world," it has become "a badly diminished sea." Streever zeroes in on the fate of sea turtles, but his larger concern is existential. If we conceive of the history of life on Earth as a 24-hour day, he writes, humans' attention to the conservation of our fellow species has only arisen "a mere few seconds before midnight." Sea turtles and other "charismatic endangered species" can serve to "draw our attention, help us change our ways." Streever makes a convincing case, based on firsthand observations, that we are overdue for a major course correction. Even if humans have proven to be the species most responsible for extinction events, the author still ends on a hopeful note, and his creed of "optimistic environmentalism" becomes something other than a confounding oxymoron. A hopeful consideration of the beauty and fate of wild sea turtles--and the natural world as a whole.

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June 14, 2024
Aquatic ecologist Streever (In Oceans Deep, 2019) is an optimist, or in his words, he wants to live with hope. Streever and his marine biologist wife lived aboard their sailboat and were sailing off the Pacific Coast of Central America when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Unable to land anywhere except Mexico, they wandered north in the Gulf of California, observing mating sea turtles, walking beaches with turtle-nest observers, and otherwise immersing themselves in sea turtles and their place in nature. As Streever writes of evolution and turtle biology within a travel narrative, he speaks of how humans have accelerated the rate of climate change and global extinction, but also of how individuals are striving to change humanity's relationship with the planet and its animals. While Streever confides that humanity's impact on the world sent him into depression and of his decision to search for reasons to be optimistic, he always circles back to witness how sea turtles are still here and thriving thanks to dedicated conservationists.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.