This week, we continue our fight against plastics with a focus on Turtles and their significance in the Eco-system.  Society appears to be accepting the mind-set change required to reduce plastic usage, i.e. the recent British Golfing Open banned the use of plastic bottles and straws.

Sea turtles are a “keystone species“, which means they are an important part of their environment and influence other species around them. If a keystone species is removed from a habitat, the natural order can be disrupted, which impacts other wildlife and fauna in different ways.

Turtles have existed for over 100 million years and they travel throughout the world’s oceans.  There are only 7 species of turtles, world-wide, and 5 of these species swim around our coast.  But more importantly, they eat sea grass.  Sea grass is just like normal lawn grass and needs to be constantly cut short to be healthy and help it grow across the sea floor. 

Sea turtles and manatees act as grazing animals on these sea grass beds, maintaining them.  However, there has been a decline in the number of these beds of the last few decades.  It is understood that this decline may be linked to the lower number of sea turtles.  Seabeds also provide breeding grounds for many species of fish, shellfish and crustaceans – all would go extinct if the turtles were no longer around.

We have launched our Facebook Group, Sustaining Ubuntu.  The purpose of this Group is to share ideas about what we are doing in the classroom environment, with respect to the 5 R’s – reject, reduce, re-use, recycle and replenish plastics.  We would love to hear what you are doing so that we can share it with others.

This week we feature the book “I Love Turtles” in English and Afrikaans, a Turtle Skeleton Puzzle and an exciting Reading Analysis set – the First set in the series with Chart and analysis tools in a box.