Save ALL Pawikan!

Dear readers,

 J.A.E.Y.L. is back! And this time we are going to talk about the importance of marine turtles, how global warming affects them, and how we can help in conserving them.

Old sea turtle

Sea turtles have existed for over a hundred million years, and if you were to look at the number of sea turtles left at this very moment, you will see that they are really struggling to keep their kind on the line. So, this is where we come in, we were and are the cause of their loss and so it is our responsibility to restore what we have destroyed. A lot of you may be thinking, "Why save them? What's so important about sea turtles that we have to spend time to help them?" We'll tell you why.

Sea turtles are one of the few animals who eat sea grass, and sea grass needs to be constantly cut short to keep them healthy and able to grow across the sea floor. Sea grass beds provide breeding and developmental grounds for abundant species of fish, shellfish, and crustaceans. Without sea grass beds, we become at loss since we depend on marine species for food. But because of global warming, the number of sea turtles are decreasing and sea grass beds are highly affected.

Global Warming

Before we discuss on how global warming affects sea turtles let us define it first. Global warming refers to the rising of the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere. As the temperature increases it causes sea levels to rise and changes the amount and pattern of precipitation. However, how does it affect sea turtles? Even though sea turtles tend to live in warmer waters, they are still affected by the increase of temperature. Sea turtles are timid creatures; they don't do well with stress. Not having enough food in their habitat can stress them out resulting to avoidance of the mating process. If they still do mate, the number of eggs laid is lower than average and only 10% of the eggs that hatches survive the first year. So what's it to us if sea turtles gets stressed out easily? How is that connected to global warming affecting them? 


Due to global warming there is lack of food; as waters get warmer, plants and animals are not able to adjust quickly and become less abundant. This stresses out the turtles. The hot temperature also makes it difficult for the hatchlings to reach the water; the temperature becoming too hot leads to the death of the hatchlings, and so making it harder to restore the number of sea turtles. It is also believed that temperature determines the sex of a turtle and because of global warming more females will hatch and males won't be able to keep up with the number of females when it comes to reproduction.

Kids Cleaning Up at the Beach

We've talked about why marine turtles are important and how global warming affects them so let's move on to the different ways that we as students can do in conserving them. Even as students, there are many ways by which we can help conserve marine turtles. First of all, we must reduce the amount of garbage that we produce. Because of the plastic bags, cartons and other kinds of materials thrown along the seashore, sea turtles are prone into mistaking them for food leading to casualties or death. Secondly, whenever we are at the beach, we must be cautious of sea turtle nesting areas because sea turtles are easily disturbed when around people. We must make sure to give nesting areas plenty of space and do not disturb females looking for a place to nest. Third, we can volunteer in clean-up events at beaches. This may look too little in helping conserve sea turtles but at least we are helping even with the little that we can do as students.

Well, that's it for this entry. Thank you for reading this post and we hope you enjoyed it.

   

Truly yours,

J.A.E.Y.L.                           

Trip to the Pawikan!

   

PCC

Dear Readers,

 It may be late to talk about something which happened weeks ago however the feelings are still imprinted on us. The joy we felt seeing newly hatched sea turtles and the depression which came over when we had to let go off them. This happened last February 3, we went in a trip to Pawikan Conservation Center (PCC) which is in Bataan. For the older trips that we've been to, we have been traveling along with lower grade levels but this time it was only meant for us.

Hawksbill sea turtle

 We had this trip because this was made to widen our knowledge towards sea turtles found in our country. We joined because we wanted to, and we knew this was an opportunity which may not come again and so we took it. We expected the trip to be really tiring but the same time fun.Before the actual field trip we were really really excited to go on this trip, I mean who wouldn't be when it's a day dedicated to only the 6th graders!

 Since our site was PCC, we expected to learn a lot more about sea turtles. About how they grow up, what they eat or where they decide to go to once they've hatched. PCC is an organization conserving sea turtles. They were made because the number of our sea turtles have greatly diminished because of  humans eating turtle eggs. They themselves said that it would be nearly impossible to regain the sea turtle's original number, however they are working earnestly in trying to get back at least as  close enough to the original number. We learned a lot from the PCC, that baby turtles grow up not having their mothers beside them so it's a survival game out there for them. Out of 7 we have 5 kinds of sea turtles in the Philippines (hawksbill, olive ridley, leatherback, loggerhead, and green sea turtle), each having their own eating habits.After sea turtles hatches they swim towards other countries but when they've reached maturity they come back to their birthplace to lay eggs.

Olive Ridley

 The Olive Ridley is commonly known as the Pacific Ridley. Its scientific name is Lepidochelys olivacea.

                                                           Taxonomic classifications:
                                                             

                                                               Kingdom: Animalia

                                                               Phylum: Chordata

                                                               Class: Reptalia
                                                               Order: Testudines
                                                               Family: Cheloniidae
                                                               Genus: Lepidochelys

Baby Olive Ridley

 What's interesting with Olive Ridley turtles is that unlike other sea turtles they prefer black sand, also they are the smallest kind of sea turtles. We chose Olive Ridley out of the other sea turtles because we found them to be really adorable and that is because seeing newly hatched ones, they looked so helpless that we couldn't take our eyes off of them.

Olive Ridley turtles are predominantly carnivorous especially during their early stages of life. They are favourable towards Mangroves, the breeding grounds of fishes,prawns and crabs which they feed on after having to migrate over large distances in the sea. During our stay in the PCC we released a couple of Olive Ridleys which was quite depressing knowing that we couldn't keep them but it was for their own good.

Thank you for reading our 2nd entry and I hope to your reading our suceeding posts.

Sincerly yours
J.A.E.Y.L.                      

Message from the Editors

Dear Readers,

Pencil v.s. Camera

Who are we?Just simple students you might say but we plan to expand your knowledge through the experiences we've been through.We are the future or of this generation and so we would like to help in any way we could, for the Mother Nature by sharing our studies to you.Before that we would like to introduce ourselves.

 J- Jose is a really energetic person.His face resembles Dory from "Finding Nemo" there are times when we call him Dory, but he doesn't really mind, all he does is laugh it off.

 A- Allan is really outgoing in whatever he does.He loves playing sports like basketball,soccer and table tennis.He could be really naughty at times but once you get to know him he's actually helpful towards projects.

E- Edsa is a tall girl,she really likes Math since it's her ace subject and as for a non academic subject she likes art.She's picky with the food she eats, however when it comes to sweets she'll never say no.

Y- Ysabel is treated as an older sister.She's very caring towards her classmates and she's the perfect person to get advices from when it comes to liking someone.Added to that she has a wonderful singing voice.

 L- Luis is a friendly guy.He's known to be a great swimmer in our batch, however he stopped in his training to explore other sports.Which is why at the moment he is training to be better at playing badminton.

 From now on we would be addressing ourselves J.A.E.Y.L. and we look forward to your reading our next entries.