Not too long ago I done a post on the dangers of how simple pieces of plastic like the humble straw are effecting our marine sea life.

Nationalgeo.com

I focused on the green sea turtle and I also done a post on how bizarrely sandwiches are causing problems to the environment and how it might be something we may need to start thinking about differently.

Today I want to continue the focus on the green sea turtles as from doing some research on my initial post on the turtles and the dangers of plastic I learned about the deadly waters and in all places the "supposed" clear paradise waters of Hawaii.

Yes apparently those waters aren't as safe as we would like to imagine.

Twitter.com

You see "Nitrogen runoff" from cities and near by farms are triggering outbreaks of the deadly disease known as fibropapillomatosis.

This horrid disease is now one of the leading causes of death for the sea turtles but now scientists have atleast figured out why these turtles and other marine life in certain areas seem to suffer from it.

So it seems turtles living in parts of the ocean with higher concentrations of nitrogen also suffered a higher occurrence of the disease, interesting but how is this happening?

tenor.com

Well the answer is in algae! Algae is what many of the turtles rely on to eat.
And guess what?.. the algae stores nitrogen but not only that the algae converts the already excessive nitrogen into arginine, which is an amino acid.

And the effects of the Arginine in turn supports the growth of the virus that causes the fibropapollomatosis.
So in other words its said you could even imagine the disease to be like a car, and for a car to run it needs fuel right?
Well unfortunately the arginine just happens to be its fuel which powers the disease to grow.

In turn what's happening with this growth?

Well its these horrid tumours that are growing on the face's of these poor creatures not only that but this deadly disease fibropapillomatosis grows everywhere on flippers and internal organs especially on the already endangered green sea turtles.

This is very distressing indeed and most uncomfortable for the turtle these tumours will give him many problems in life for example vision difficulties, eating, swimming etc unless they are removed professionally.

reddit.com

In 2010 science researchers found that turtles living in parts of the ocean with higher concentrations of nitrogen were also suffering a higher occurrence of the horrid fibropapillomatosis disease making it I think pretty dam obvious what is going on here.

aquatic.ca

How bad is it?

Well Proline and Glycine are molecules commonly found in human cancer tissue well they are also turning up in the elevated levels inside of these poor turtles.

There are still obviously many things happening around the world from the wind turbines killing bats to the solar collectors smoking down birds and God only knows what we've done to the bees??

The mission continues if maybe enough people become aware of the horrors that we are subjecting to the animal kingdom we can change our ways for the better and who knows maybe even be able to get some big corporations to change also.

In such a self centred world start thinking about something else besides "us" and give the animals a share of this planet and with the respect that they deserve.