Two loggerhead turtles have been found dead within the space of a week, the deaths caused by entanglement in fishing lines.

The image of a dead or wounded turtle is particularly distressing. Sea turtles are animals that grow to a huge size and often reach over 100 years of age. Their breeding is difficult, to say the least, in an age where the sandy beaches which they use to lay their eggs, are taken over by humans and domestic animals. The hatchlings face a mountain of a task without these added threats. Sadly, their numbers are declining and declining fast.

Apart from the human problems they face in breeding, many turtles become sick through ingesting plastic bags, which they perceive to be their staple food – jellyfish. Others, like the ones mentioned, can get horrific injuries by getting caught up on industrial fish hooks, and worse, entanglement in fishing lines or nets.

Malta’s authorities try to do their bit at the San Lucjan rehabilitation centre, and the release back into the wild of turtles that have been nursed back to health is now a yearly event. The relative ministry has also issued pamphlets for fishermen, to advise them on how best to treat turtles on the spot, when they do become tangled up in nets and lines, but it seems that the initiative has either lost momentum or is not publicised as much as it was in the past.

Whatever the case may be, the inadvertent killing of such animals is leading to fewer and fewer of the species in the wild. Like every other species, these turtles are part of the food chain, they are a predator and as a force of nature, they do have their role in regulating the ecosystems of the seas.

What we have to understand here, is that nature is a strange thing. These wise old turtles take decades to reach full size and they do not reproduce before a certain age, or even after. We must do all we can to ensure their survival and prosperity.

Many experts believe that the reason why the world is seeing so many massive jellyfish swarms is the fact that turtle numbers are in decline. One of their only natural predators is being killed off. While the issue is not as shocking or glaring as, for example, shark finning, the truth is there for all to see. Turtles are being killed as a result of man’s greed. Many seem to think that just because we cannot see what goes on in our seas, we are immune to the fallout effects of our own actions.

Green activists claim that we are almost at the point of no return, that we have almost fished the seas ‘dry’. Unless we change our ways and change them fast, we may alter this earth irreparably.