"Sea Turtle"
artwork created by artist Johannes Stoetter
Sea Turtle was created in Lofoten Norway in October 2020 during the art residence for The Memory of Water project. The artists group: bodypainter Johannes Stoetter, choreographer/dancer Małgorzata Suś, film director/visual artist Vilija Vitkute, documentary filmmaker - Linnea Grimstedt and accompanying them Norwegian composer Tine Surel Lange, created an illusionary performance on the Utakleiv beach - a sea turtle became alive in a human form. The project speaks about the connection between human and sea animals, and brings attention towards the sea life crisis.
The Sea Turtle body painting artwork was created for the first time by Johannes Stoetter in 2019 April 12. The turtle illusion was released officially in the media and presented several times in different venues around the world and in worldwide TV shows. The Memory of Water art residence in Lofoten, Norway, was the first opportunity to capture the illusionary bodypainting in the natural surroundings on the Utakleiv beach by the Arctic Ocean. Loggerhead turtles are not seen in this region of the world, but that gives even more strangeness to the appearance of the turtle and directs the attention to all the anomalies of the natural world nowadays.
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find out more about Johannes Stoetter bodypainting - www.johannesstoetterart.com
Turtles date back to about 220 million years ago, making them one of the most primitive groups of reptiles that still inhabit the earth.
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The ancestors of the contemporary sea turtle dates back to 120 millions years ago, long before the appearance of our human ancestors ( 5 million years ago).
About the
Loggerhead Turtle
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Loggerhead turtles are slow growing, long lived animals that do not reach sexual maturity until they are 35 years old. They are found throughout temperate and tropical regions of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, and are the most abundant species of marine turtle found in United States coastal waters. Loggerhead turtles spend the majority of their time in the ocean with females only coming ashore to nest. After mating at sea, females come to shore a few times during the nesting season, dig a burrow in the sand, and lay 100-120 eggs each time. After several weeks, loggerhead hatchlings emerge from the nest and enter the water together.
Juvenile loggerhead turtles may spend as long as 7-12 years foraging in the open ocean environment. During this part of their lives, loggerhead turtles stay close to floating seaweeds and other objects and likely feed on crustaceans and other invertebrates that are also attracted to seaweed. Riding currents that circle entire ocean basins, it is possible that juvenile loggerhead turtles cross the ocean several times during this period. Scientists are only recently beginning to learn where these turtles go and what they do during these “lost years.” Throughout its lifetime, a loggerhead turtle may cross the ocean several times, traveling to and from preferred feeding or nesting sites.
Sea turtles are extremely resilient animals. They, along with crocodiles were the only four-limbed animals to survive the Cretaceous mass extinction event which ended the life of the dinosaurs and three-quarters of the animal and plant life on Earth.
Like other marine turtles, loggerhead turtles return to the same beach where they hatched to nest, even if it is thousands of miles from their preferred feeding areas. The two largest remaining nesting areas (in terms of numbers of nesting females) for Loggerhead Turtles are the southeast coast of the United States and the coast of Oman.
Like all sea turtle species, loggerhead turtles face many threats that impact their population numbers. Coastal development has reduced the area where they can successfully nest, dogs and other animals often destroy their nests, and historically, people harvested their eggs for food. Fortunately, some of their primary nesting sites are in countries with strict legal protections, but even in those places, threats to their nesting beaches still persist. Legal measures often extend to turtle nests but rarely extend to the beaches themselves, so alteration of natural habitat continues to threaten this and other marine turtles. Hunting of adult loggerhead turtles for food also still occurs in some places. Additionally, the preferred habitats for adult loggerhead turtles overlaps with rich fishing grounds, and thousands of individuals are accidentally captured in fishing operations targeting other species.
All plastic in the oceans is harmful to marine life, but one type of plastic pollution is especially deadly - Fishing gear.
Why is it more deadly?
Fishing gear is designed to catch and kill marine life, and it continues to do that even when it is abandoned or lost at sea.
One abandoned fishing net can cause years or even decades of death and destruction.
Around 300 sea turtles were discovered dead in a single incident in 2018, entangled in a ghost fishing net in Mexican waters.
We must put a stop to this destruction of life in our oceans.
( text by seaspiracy )
All of these threats have combined to drive loggerhead turtle populations to dangerously low levels. Naturally, only one or two of thousands of eggs will make it to adulthood, and these added anthropogenic pressures on nesting beaches and juvenile and young adult turtles make their chance of survival even worse. In the United States, wide scale studies of loggerhead turtle nesting beaches indicate consistent declines in numbers of females that return each year, even with the strong protection measures in place there. These declines may reflect alterations to nesting beaches, threats to loggerhead turtles outside of U.S. waters, or a delayed response to decades of accidental capture by U.S. fishers – likely a combination of all three.
how to save the ocean -
1. SHIFT TO A PLANT-BASED DIET
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2.ENFORCE NO-CATCH MARINE RESERVES PROTECTING 30% OF OUR OCEANS BY 2030
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3.END FISHING SUBSIDIES
[CURRENTLY $35 BILLION PER YEAR]
https://www.seaspiracy.org
Whale
While filming the Sea Turtle illusion on the Utakleiv beach in Lofoten, we were informed that near our location a big dead sperm whale had been found. After finishing filming we went to see the whale and it was an absolutely appalling view that moved us deeply and brought a reflection about the condition of the animals living in the ocean. Both turtles and whales are seriously endangered and they suffer enormous harm due to the human activity on the global waters - such as fishing industry, pollution caused by fishing and other plastic and oil pollution, as well as they are impacted by the climate change and rising temperature of the ocean.
