World Sea Turtle Day is celebrated today. But with over-fishing and climate change destroying their natural habitats, these amazing creatures are under threat. In fact, six out of seven species of marine turtle are threatened with extinction. What can you do to help?
Start by joining The Cartagena Turtles Club which is supporting a project that protects the Hawksbill Turtle in Caribbean waters close to the city of Cartagena.
Part of the funds from the sale of The Cartagena Turtles Club’s unique collection of Carbon Creatures’ Hawksbill Turtle NFTs goes to a project protecting these wonderful animals with the remainder going to restoring mangrove forests in Cartagena to combat climate change and restore their natural habitats in the region.
10 Facts About Marine Turtles
If you needed any more good reasons to support this project, here are 10 facts from the World Wildlife Fund that show just how amazing these creatures are, and highlight why we must fight back against the multiple threats they face of poaching, over-fishing, climate change and plastic waste.
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Turtles don’t have teeth. Instead, their upper and lower jaws have sheaths made of keratin (the same stuff your fingernails are made of) that fit onto the skull like a pair of false teeth.
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Turtle shells are made of over 50 bones fused together – so they’re literally wearing their bones on the outside.
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The first few years of a marine turtle’s life are often referred to as the ‘lost years’. That’s because the time between when the hatchlings emerge until they return to coastal shallow waters to forage is incredibly difficult to study. The lost years they spend at sea – which can be up to 20 years – largely remain a mystery to humans.
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Marine turtle species vary greatly in size. The smallest, Kemp’s ridley, are around 70cm long and up to 40kg in weight whilst the leatherback can reach up to 180cm and 500kg in weight. That’s over 10 times heavier!
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It’s estimated that as few as 1 in 1,000 marine turtle eggs will survive to adulthood. And if beaches are strewn with litter, it can prevent hatchlings reaching the sea.
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Female leatherbacks make some interesting noises when they are nesting – some of which sound similar to a human belch.
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Turtles seem to prefer red, orange and yellow coloured food. They appear to investigate these colours more than others when looking for a meal.
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Marine turtles can migrate long distances – the record is for a female leatherback that swam nearly 13,000 miles over 647 days from Indonesia to the west coast of America!
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Female marine turtles return to the same beach they hatched on to nest. Marine turtles’ amazing ability to navigate comes from their sensitivity to the Earth’s magnetic fields.
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Nearly all species (six out of seven) of sea turtle are now classified as endangered, with three of the seven existing species being critically endangered. Slaughtered for their eggs, meat, skin, and shells, sea turtles suffer from poaching and over-exploitation. They also face habitat destruction and accidental capture—known as bycatch—in fishing gear. Climate change has an impact on turtle nesting sites; it alters sand temperatures, which then affects the sex of hatchlings. Plastic pollution is another threat to sea turtles. In fact, one sea turtle out of two has ingested plastic – often mistaking it for food such as jellyfish
The Cartagena Turtles Club Raising Awareness on Biodiversity Loss
For all of the above reasons, The Cartagena Turtles Club has teamed up with Carbon Creatures to allocate all of its collection of Hawksbill Turtles NFTs to raising money to help protect these incredible reptiles.
Carbon Creatures’ NFT collection is designed to help companies and local governments engage with their audience in a fun way while creating a powerful environmental movement that will make the world a healthier place.
Wear Your Eco-Friendly NFT With Pride
Carbon Creatures NFTs are already minted and available on the Polygon blockchain and can be found on NFT platform OpenSea.
As well as the Hawksbill Turtles being used for this initiative, other NFTs include Silverback Gorillas, Bengal Tigers, Black Rhinos, Slender Snouted Crocodiles, Brown Monkeys, and the Scimitar Horned Oryx. The next tranche of creatures will include Asian Elephants, Polar Bears, Lemurs, Blue Iguanas, Blue Whales, Great White Sharks, and more.
Each NFT animal represents one of these endangered species “frozen in carbonite” and the funds from each sale are invested in carbon projects, carbon offsets, and charities that support endangered animals and the restoration of their habitats. Each Carbon Creature is backed by at least one metric ton of carbon offsets which is the equivalent of an economy class return flight from New York to London.
As well as having a positive social and environmental impact, Meta Carbon’s innovative, eco-friendly NFTs can be named, leveled up, nurtured, traded, and played in a range of specially-built Carbon Creatures and third-party Metaverse gaming environments.
On World Sea Turtle Day, we invite you to collect your first turtle-friendly NFT.
For more information about or NFT collection, click on the link below.