Climate Warming Is Turning 99% of Baby Green Sea Turtles Female

“This blew our minds because no one had ever heard of anything like this in a vertebrate. ... I think we're going to look at the greatest drop in species diversity ever seen since man has been around.”

- Biologist David Owens, Ph.D. Emeritus, College of Charleston, SC

January 26, 2018 - Charleston, South Carolina - For centuries in ancient China, Indonesia, Bali, Australia, Hawaii and the Cayman Islands, the big and beautiful green sea turtles have been eaten as a delicacy and their skin tanned for handbags. All the hunting, poaching and egg harvesting have greatly reduced the turtle populations. And now another threat to their survival is coming in a bizarre way. Climate change is turning 99% of baby sea turtles into females. That means fewer and fewer males to fertilize females, so by the end of this century warming century, the green sea turtles could be facing extinction.