Impacts of climate change on the largest green turtle population in the world: the nGBR green turtle population

Abstract

[Extract] Sea turtles are vulnerable to aspects of climate change because they have life history, physiological attributes and behaviour that make them extremely sensitive to environmental changes (Hamann et al., 2007; Hawkes et al., 2009; Poloczanska et al., 2009). Arguably, the more detectable impacts of climate change to sea turtles will occur during their terrestrial reproductive phase (egg laying, egg incubation and hatchling success phase) since there are clear, and relatively straightforward, effects of increased temperature, sea level rise and cyclonic activity on sea turtle nesting sites and reproductive output (Hawkes et al., 2009; Fuentes et al., 2010a; Witt et al., 2010).