Sandy beaches and sea turtles: an introduction to Ronel Nel
As the newest faculty member to join the UW Marine Biology Program and School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, we spoke with Ronel Nel, a beach ecologist and sea turtle conservationist from South Africa.
Tell us a bit about your background
I received my PhD from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2002, and quickly started working with a state conservation agency, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. At that time, the agency had just introduced a national ban on beach driving, and as a scientist working for the agency, one of my responsibilities was explaining to people why the ban was necessary.
That was my introduction to sea turtles. As a beach ecologist, I originally had been working on invertebrates, and the switch to sea turtles has kept me busy for the last 20 years.
Beginning with a 40-year-old monitoring program dataset that I was able to put into an electronic database, I started an analysis of the records of South Africa’s sea turtles and soon realized the huge number of questions that needed to be answered. No one had been asking the questions around why there were declines in sea turtle populations.
So, that is what I set out to do.
What was your next step?
I was offered a position at the University of Port Elizabeth, now called Nelson Mandela University (NMMU), which is where my current research remains based. It was the first faculty position actively focused on sea turtles, and I was working on generating scientific evidence for the decisions made around sea turtle conservation with a team of students.
During a speaking tour at different universities across the globe, my last stop was at SAFS. I had met Kerry Naish, the director of the UW Marine Biology program before when she had given a talk about salmon in South Africa, and I was struck by the overlap in the life histories of the two creatures.
They both are migrant species, going back to very specific spawning sites during their lifetime. We started to collaborate, and I visited again in 2010 and met with other scientists, including Professor Andre Punt, who assisted with the first quantitative analysis of the South African sea turtle monitoring program.
This collaboration with SAFS geneticists has continued throughout the years, and my research in South Africa continues as well.
What are you excited about in this next step on your journey?
Teaching and research are the things that most excite me. From a research perspective, it’s going to be exciting to learn about the latest genetics techniques available here in the US. My research team back at NMU in South Africa will benefit from world-class knowledge and science of SAFS faculty members.
In regard to teaching, I have an opportunity to share a unique perspective from a different part of the world with students. Our teaching is different, our methods are different, our outlook is different, and the opportunities are different. It will be exciting to share with students here at UW.
What sea turtles can be found in South Africa?
Two species of sea turtles call South Africa’s beaches home: loggerheads and leatherbacks. Despite being different species, they have been receiving the same conservation treatment for 60 years. While loggerheads have been responding well, with a five-time population increase, the number of nesting female leatherbacks remains only 60.
The differences in the two species formed the basis of some of our research questions 10 years ago – why were they responding differently? Both share similar threats at sea, such as manmade issues like fishing entanglement, plastic pollution, and ship strikes.
A key component of the research has been to assess whether sea turtles are a refugee species, meaning are they being actively displaced from their ideal habitat. This concept hasn’t been fully researched yet in the marine environment as it has been done for the terrestrial environment—researchers can use large satellite imagery for land-based research, but it’s a lot harder to do at sea.
When I was awarded the Pew Marine Fellowship in 2018, I looked at the refugee species concept and began using alternative research methods, such as testing genetics, satellite tagging for distributions, and investigating whether species were metabolically stressed. The aim was to identify indicators that provided insight into whether sea turtles were refugees or ecologically stressed. Was the ocean now sub-optimal for them?
An interesting insight is that despite loggerheads doing well in terms of population size, they are actually facing a size reduction as a species. This has translated into a reduction of 1cm a decade in loggerheads, something not seen in the leatherback populations.
Does this decrease in size point to food issues, or climate change, or other things? Clearly, we are seeing something happening in the environment that is resulting in a rapid change in a species that is supposed to be recovering.