On March 26 in Haridwar, India, a herd of wild deer were videoed strolling the streets during the 21-day nationwide lockdown. In California's Yosemite National Park, officials have described wild bears as "having a party," since the park closed to the public on March 20. In Vietnam in early April, there were sightings of dolphins swimming off the coasts of the popular beach destinations of Nha Trang and Binh Thuan in what has been described as a "strange," "rare" and "surprising" phenomenon. The vulnerable species can be seen in aerial images clearly enjoying the lack of tourists in another show of coastal wildlife revival.
Also in Thailand, a herd of dugong were seen off the coast of Libong Island. These turtles aren't the only animals thriving in human-free environments. Some interesting tidbits about these creatures include: their hefty size (weighing in at 400 kilograms), their lack of a hard shell, which is replaced by a thick layer of cartilage, their impressive swimming abilities, as they are the fastest swimmers and deepest divers in the turtle community, that they can eat their weight in jellyfish in one day, and that they spend as little as 0.1% of the day resting. Further, in late March, 84 hatchlings were found at a national park in the southern province of Phang Nga, which borders the Andaman Sea. Compared to procreation the year before, "we didn't have this many spawn, because turtles have a high risk of getting killed by fishing gear and humans disturbing the beach," he said. The director of the Phuket Marine Biological Center, Kongkiat Kittiwatanawong, said 11 nests have been found since November of last year. No nests of the species, considered vulnerable globally, had been found in Thailand in the past five years. This has freed up the beaches for female leatherback sea turtles to lay their eggs in dark and quiet stretches of sand. In an effort to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, Thailand has banned international flights and is urging citizens to stay home. In Thailand, authorities have found the largest number of nests of rare leatherback sea turtles in two decades. Highly migratory animals, they often travel hundreds of miles to reach their nesting beach, usually the same beach they hatched from.When the cat's away, the mice will play or in this case, during pandemic lockdown, animals will reclaim the spaces once bustling with human activity. They nest every one to three years and may lay several clutches of eggs each season. Reproductionįemales aren’t sexually mature until about ten to twelve years of age.
They also eat jellyfish, and occasionally munch on seaweed and sargassum. They prefer shallow waters, where they dive to the bottom to feed on crabs, which are their favorite food, and other shellfish. Their upper shell, or carapace, is a greenish-grey color, and their bellies are off-white to yellowish. Range and Appearanceįound primarily in the Gulf of Mexico, but also as far north as Nova Scotia, Kemp’s ridleys are among the smallest sea turtles, reaching only about 2 feet in shell length and weighing up to 100 pounds. Beset by predators, hatchlings make this journey at night, breaking out of their shells using their caruncle, a single temporary tooth grown just for this purpose. Even more riveting is the later struggle to the ocean of each tiny, vulnerable hatchling. During an arribada, females take over entire portions of beaches, lugging their big bodies through the sand with their flippers until they find a satisfying spot to lay their eggs. And though their nesting grounds are protected and many commercial fishing fleets now use turtle excluder devices in their nets, these turtles have not been able to rebound.įor this reason, their nesting processions, called arribadas, make for especially high drama. Their perilous situation is attributed primarily to the over-harvesting of their eggs during the last century. The Kemp’s ridley turtle is the world’s most endangered sea turtle.
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