Pollution fueling a sex imbalance among endangered green sea turtles

Green sea turtles are producing more females in response to a warming climate — and human-caused pollution is helping fuel the surge, a recent analysis suggests. Writing in Frontiers in Marine Science, researchers say ocean contaminants are contributing to a surge of female green sea turtles. Like many other reptiles, sea turtles’ sex development is influenced by the temperature of their nests. Green sea turtles incubate in large clutches of eggs their migratory mothers bury in the sand on nesting beaches. Over the course of about two months, they develop from embryos into tiny turtles, with warmer sands producing more females and cooler sands producing more males.

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