Endangered Green Sea Turtles Found Wounded in Japan

In a shocking incident, at least 30 endangered green sea turtles were found on Thursday on the verge of death, with wounds on their neck, near the remote Japanese island of Kumejima, in southern Okinawa prefecture.

The incident was reported by the locals living near the Kumejina island who called the Okinawa Prefectural Police’s Naha Police Station, which sent local officers to the scene to investigate the matter and alarmed the marine biologists and other workers from the island’s Sea Turtle Museum.

Yoshi Tsukakoshi, a spokesman at the Kumejima sea turtle museum, said that the area where the sea turtles were found is their natural habitat and is covered with seagrass, which the sea turtles eat.

Although they rushed to the beach, by the time the team of the museum reached the spot most of the endangered turtles were lying motionless on the beach.

According to the news site The Mainichi, the sea turtles were found bleeding and barely breathing during a low tide in the Maja area on the east side of the island. Few of them were already dead.

The turtles were reportedly found with wounds around their necks caused by what appeared to be a blade, some of them had sting marks, and some were entangled in nets used for fishing.

Tsukakoshi explained that local fishers consider sea turtles a nuisance because they get entangled in and rip their nets and some of them even think turtles prevent the fish from spawning in the area by eating all the seagrass before it grows.

According to the Kumejima Municipal Government, police are continuing to investigate and are questioning witnesses.

According to the international non-governmental organization World Wide Fund for Nature, all sea turtle species are considered endangered and are protected worldwide being on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

However, they’re coming under increasing threat from coastal development, overfishing, and bycatch – when turtles are unintentionally caught during fishing for other species – among other factors.