Antalya governor calls for protection of endangered species

The governor of the southern province of Antalya has issued a call for protection of four endangered species of the Mediterranean Sea, including sea turtles, dusky groupers, seahorses and tower shells.

Professor Mehmet Cengiz Deval of Akdeniz University's Faculty of Fisheries told the Doğan News Agency that the species are on the red list of The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as endangered species.

 "There are five species of sea turtles in the Mediterranean Sea but only the loggerhead sea turtle (caretta caretta) and the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) nest on Turkish beaches," said Deval.

 "There are only 2,000 adult female caretta carettas and 500 green sea turtles," he added.

"It is estimated that 40 percent of the caretta carettas and all of the green sea turtles nest on Turkey's beaches. Seventy percent of caretta caretta nests are in Antalya and 99 percent of green sea turtle nests are on the eastern Mediterranean coast, on the beaches of Mersin and Hatay."

Deval said that the dusky groupers living in the Turkish waters ranging from Marmara, the Aegean and the Mediterranean Sea have been classified as "Endangered-EN" species on the IUCN's red list since 2004.

The professor said the seahorse (Hippocampus hippocampus) is a type of fish that generally lives in shallow waters from one-meter to 20-meters deep, but it can also be seen in deeper waters at a maximum depth of 60-meters. Deval added that the tower shells (Turritella communis) live on soft sea beds in shallow waters.