Plastic map to save baby turtles
Floating marine plastics can be fatal to sea turtle hatchlings, according to the researcher, who aims to find out where the pathways of the two are likely to cross. Image: graustufe/iStockphoto A PhD student at The University of Western Australia is creating the first map to show the distribution of floating marine plastics in Australian waters, and models that chart the likely pathways of these plastics and sea turtle hatchlings."The early life of sea turtles occurs at the ocean's surface, where there's an increasing amount of floating plastics that are proving fatal to hatchlings," PhD student Julia Reisser said.Ms Reisser, who is also a CSIRO researcher, has been studying sea turtles for nine years and in 2010 she broadened her research to include marine plastics."My work is identifying the places contributing most to the increase in plastics in Australia's oceans and how this links to sea turtle life cycles," Ms Reisser said."We're...