Kurumba’s Journey

Kurumba’s Message to Mankind
Join the grade 6 students of Swiss international School Qatar as they
explore how change and human development can both protect and harm
our precious marine life. Discover how they adopted Kurumba and
became part of her healing journey.

Kurumba’s Journey
Kurumba captured the hearts of all our grade
6 students due to her feisty spirit, beautiful
eyes and determination to recover from her
horrific injuries
Our grade 6 students were exploring concepts
of development, fairness and change and
Kurumba’s rehabilitation provides a powerful
look into how human actions can harm and heal
these precious creatures.
In this magazine, we will look at how complex
and paradoxical sustainable development
actually is.
More importantly, we will celebrate how
education and commitment to action can
create enormous impact.
Despite their young age, our students are
inspired and prepared to Be the Change.
Kurumba was found seriously injured in a ghost net.

Development and
Fairness at M7
Museum
Learning doesn’t stop when the lesson is
finished and caring should continue
throughout our life time. Even when last
year’s grade 6s had finished studying
about sea turtles, they still felt compelled
to take action to address the enormous
amount of plastic waste generated by our
community.
Humanitarian organisations estimate that over 600 million children live in
conflict zones. That’s twice the population of Brazil. At the same time,
plastic is decimating the population of endangered sea turtles at an
alarming rate. But, is it possible to address both disasters at the same
time? With support from M7 Museum, the children at Swiss International
School Qatar are recycling plastic to create toys and combs for children
fleeing conflict in the Middle East. Every happy child means one less
danger for sea turtles.
We have multiple GSL teams that are joining forces to implement this
challenging project. Plastic has been flooding in and students are sorting
the trash into recyclables and non recyclables. The non recyclables will
be used to create living walls and play areas for our younger children.
We are due to recycle our plastic and start toy production in December.

Turtle Troubles
By Josiah 6b
Imagine diving into the ocean. Picture colorful fish darting between
the corals, and turtles gliding majestically. Now picture that same
ocean completely lifeless… The coral is bleached, nothing is moving.
This is what the future can be, because of the terrible choices we have
made. Did you know that, according to the Olive Ridley Project, a
turtle that has eaten a single piece of plastic has a 22% chance of
dying? Sea turtles have been swimming in the world’s oceans for over
100 million years, but now they are at risk of disappearing forever.
According to the Olive Ridley Project, only one in 1,000 sea turtle
hatchlings will survive from egg to adulthood! Sea turtles have always
had natural threats, including predators such as terns, herons, and reef
sharks, or the flooding of nests, but these formed a natural balance
with the amount of hatchlings born each year. This kept most sea
turtle populations stable for millions of years. However, when human
threats began to intensify, things tipped way out of balance, resulting
in the decline of sea turtle populations. Here are some of the biggest
threats to sea turtles:
1. Poaching: Many sea turtles are illegally poached for their eggs,
meat, and shell. While many countries have laws against this
practice, the enforcement is often relaxed and the poaching runs
rampant. The hawksbill suffers greatly from this, as its shell is
beautifully marbled with yellow, amber, brown, and black. They
are now listed as critically endangered.
2. Entanglement: A lot of turtles in rehabilitation programs were
caught in abandoned fishing nets, known as ghost nets.
Entanglement can result in the loss of one or multiple flippers,
buoyancy problems, starvations, and drowning.
An Olive Ridley hatchling photographed by the Olive Ridley Project.
3. Climate Change: Climate change is a double threat. The first
problem is that temperature decides the gender of sea turtles. A
higher ocean temperature results in far more females than males.
The second threat is that climate change is causing sea levels to
rise, destroying nesting beaches.
4. Light Pollution: Turtle hatchlings use the light of the moon to
find their way to the ocean, so artificial light will distract and/or
lure them away from the water, wasting their energy, and
exposing them to predators.
5. Plastic Ingestion: Plastic is a severe threat, as it accumulates the
smell of the ocean over time, so sea turtles can’t tell it apart
from food. The massive leatherback often confuses plastic bags
with its favorite food, jellyfish. As the world’s oceans become
more and more littered, this threat will continue to intensify.

other facts. Try to buy from companies that
produce seafood responsibly.
1.Raise Awareness: This is perhaps the most
important point. You don’t need much money
or skill. Make posters, host fundraisers, do
whatever you can to educate people about sea
turtles, the troubles they face, and what we
can do to help them.
Conclusion
How You Can Help
The previous paragraph made one thing clear. Sea turtles need our
help! Charities usually accept donations and volunteers.
Volunteers don’t even need medical knowledge! Here are some
other ways you can help.
1. Use Sustainable Items: Using reusable water bottles and
shopping bags prevents the use of a new one every time.
Many plastic items will take thousands of years to break
down, and even then they pose danger as microplastic. You
can also use biodegradable cutlery and containers that will
turn to soil over time.
2. Fill in Holes and Knock Down Sandcastles: Even a
sandcastle that looks tiny to you is massive to a tiny turtle
hatchling. Holes and sandcastles can trap sea turtles, waste
their energy, and leave them exposed to predators.
3. Learn How Your Seafood is Caught: Many seafood
companies can tell you where and how they catch fish,
whether or not they use sea turtle deterrent systems, and
All in all, you now know about what is
driving sea turtles to extinction, and what we
can do to stop it. From poaching to pollution,
from sandcastles to seafood, the future is in
our hands. As Albert Einstein once said: “The world will not be
destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them
without doing anything.” This is a message we must all take to
heart. I will leave you with nine words: Save the turtles, save the
ocean, save the world.
Bibliography
For the article:
1. The Olive Ridley Project
2. What Can You Do To Help Sea Turtles - NOAA
Fisheries (National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration)
3. WWF - Sea Turtles (World Wildlife Fund)

Suffering Sea Turtles
Ivy in 6A takes Josiah’s message further by
explaining more about how important turtles
are and how we can use modern technology
Do you know what happens to your plastic bags, straws, cans and bottles?
They probably just float into nowhere, right?
Turtles have been around for over 100 million years. That's a long time!
Sea turtles are beautiful creatures. There are seven species of sea turtles;
Hawksbill, Flatback, Leatherback, Green sea turtles, Loggerhead, Olive
Ridley and the Kemp's Ridley. But six out of seven of these species are
endangered! They all thrived before us humans came along. You must be
thinking “why is it such a bad thing if they go extinct? They're just turtles!”
Well, sea turtles are a keystone species. That means that they are
consumers, predators and prey! So without them WE would go extinct
along with a lot of other animals.
You must be thinking, “Ok, so we caused their endangerment, but how?”
Well, we are polluting in so many ways. Let’s start with light pollution or
artificial lighting. But wait, light can pollute? But how!? Too much light
coming from cities near the ocean can discourage female sea turtles to
nest. It can also confuse the nestlings when hatched.
Baby sea turtles use the light of the moon reflecting off the ocean to know
where to go, so the cities to a baby turtle will look a lot like the ocean.
Therefore they will try to crawl to the cities and end up getting run over or
stepped on! “So what! We can just pick them up and move them, right?”
No! You should never touch a baby turtle. They need to imprint on their
beach so they can come back and lay eggs onto the beach. Turtles will
only lay eggs on the same beach that they were born on. So don't touch
them! Another way we are harming beaches is the fact that we are driving
through the nesting sites which causes tire tracks that hatchlings can’t get
over.

Another form of pollution is marine debris. This happens when
humans throw trash where it doesn't belong. It will be blown into
the ocean by the wind. One of the worst types of marine debris is
plastic bags. Plastic bags look so much like jelly fish in the water,
floating, clear and boneless. Sadly, jellyfish are one of sea turtles
favorite food, so they will eat it. But if a sea turtle eats too much
plastic then it will take up so much space in the turtle's tummy that
it will starve to death, or not be able to dive any more!
Turtle’s are also endangered by Ghost Nets. Ghost nets are often
fishing nets gone adrift, they will also often smell like prawns and
prawns are a turtles favorite food. And since Ghost Nets are
invisible, hence the name, “Ghost Nets,” the turtle will swim right
into the nets, trapping the poor turtle(s). It will often wrap around
the turtle's neck or flipper(s). It will (if not treated in time) catch all
the other marine debris and the turtle will end up dragging all this
other stuff with them severing their flippers or giving their cuts
possibly deadly infections!
An x ray of a turtle who swallowed a fish hook (ocean debris).
Global warming is affecting sea turtles in many ways, let's start
with food. Global warming is making the ocean hotter therefore
driving all the fish deeper and deeper into the water, eventually out
of sea turtles reach. Another way sea turtles are affected by global
warming is sex (gender). If you did not know the temperature of
the sand affects the sex of the sea turtle hatchlings. They call it
“hot chicks and cool guys,” so if the temperature of the sand is
about 31 degrees celcius you will get a female but if the
temperature is below 27.7 degrees celsius you’ll get a male sea
turtle. So since global warming is making Earth hotter we have
been getting more female turtles than males and if it gets any
worse and we get too many female’s then there will be no males to
fertilize the eggs, that means that turtles will go extinct.

At the Olive Ridley project they are trying to save
and track sea turtles! They started tracking the
ocean currents, trying to find out where these
currents were bringing plastic and to try and save
turtles in their path. They work in the United
Kingdom, Pakistan, Oman, the Maldives,
Seychelles and Kenya! We will be talking mostly
about the Maldives though since SISQ has a
special connection with them. In the Maldives they
currently have 8 sea turtles, all Olive Ridleys. Now,
the types of treatment they use to find micro
plastics (teeny tiny plastics often found on
beaches), are x rays and internal scans. Internal
scans are when they will (most likely) stick a teeny
tiny camera down the turtle's esophagus (food
pipe) to see what's in the turtle's stomach. Since
it’s super hard to do surgeries to check their
stomachs the Olive Ridley project relies heavily on
internal scans. Sometimes after releasing a turtle
they will put a tracker on the turtle's shell to make
sure that the turtle is ok, the tracker will eventually
fall off or run out of battery. The photo below
shows a map of a sea turtle, Varray’s journey so
far (Olive Ridley project)
All in all us humans have done a lot to harm sea turtles
but it’s not hopeless! We are also doing a lot to help
too. As Wendell Berry once said; “We do not inherit the
earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.”
IVY GOT HER INFORMATION FROM THE OLIVE RIDLEY
PROJECT AND YOU CAN LEARN MORE ABOUT THEIR WORK
ON OLIVERIDLEYPROJECT.ORG.
WE ARE ESPECIALLY GRATEFUL TO THEIR NURSES AND
VETS FOR ALLOWING US TO VISIT THEIR HOSPITAL ON A
VIRTUAL CALL.

Plastic: Good and Bad?
Nadia and Maite explore the relationship
between development and fairness by
examining why plastic is so difficult to live
without.
Plastic is an invention that is durable, low cost, water resistant, and is
lightweight. Plastic has been used for many purposes for mankind,
such as shopping, carrying your groceries. It is used in everything
from packaging to construction materials. Some disadvantages of
plastic is that it pollutes our environment and it also poses a danger to
wildlife Plastic is impossible to exterminate from our Earth but we
reduce our use of it by using paper bags, paper straws, and much
more.

How is plastic a detriment to wildlife?
Plastic is a detriment to wildlife because it is one of the biggest
reasons for pollution and it poses a danger to wildlife. For
example turtles have been suffering and suffocating due to plastic
pollution. Turtles choke, get strangled and microplastics get
digested in the turtle.
Plastic also doesn't biodegrade and it can take 1,000 years to break
down which can make the plastic build up until it reaches a crisis
point.
Some plastic gets thrown into a
landfill site, a landfill site is a
big hole in the land that is made
to put a bunch of trash in. But
sadly plastic takes a very long
time to decompose and because
of that when all the trash is put
together for a long time it causes
CO2 , and then CO2 goes up into the atmosphere creating kind of like
a barrier and then when the sun's energy comes in , it can't get back out
because the barrier is stopping it
But some plastic doesn't go to landfills , it goes to the ocean and
because of that, a big amount of sea life is getting affected because
of the choices that we humans made. 6 of 7 sea turtle species are
endangered and especially the baby sea turtles because one of their
biggest prey are jellyfish and they look a lot like plastic bags. So
the baby sea turtles eat the bags and they die
.
Benefits of plastic
But what if I told you that there are also benefits to plastic? Some
of the benefits are that when countries transport things it takes
fuel, and that fuel that is used gets
left in the air which causes CO2 .
CO2 is what causes global
warming , however when they
transport plastic it saves 20% of the
fuel because of how light it is! It
also helps by making plastic gloves
for doctors and dentists
In conclusion plastic has its benefits and
negatives but that depends on how we
humans use it and if we choose to recycle
or not, sadly most humans don't care about the sea animals like for example
turtles and they just throw away their plastic without even thinking of the
consequences that will come to the animals and the earth. But there are
some humans who care about the animals and recycle or use the plastic in a
good way like making tanks for sea turtles and that helps the animals
instead of hurting them. So how is it that you are going to use your plastic
in a way that wont hurt the sea turtles or the other animals?
DID YOU KNOW?
• Did you know that out of all plastic that is produced only 9% is
recycled?
• Did you know that more or less 2 million plastic bags are being
used all around the world?
• All around the world 73% of the pollution on beaches is plastic.
• Every minute a truckload of plastic gets thrown into the ocean
• Did you know that in some countries around the world single-use
plastic is illegal?
• https://www.google.com/search?
q=facts+about+plastic&rlz=1C5CHFA_enQA1128QA1129&oq=
facts+about+plastic&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyCQgAEEUYORi
ABDIHCAEQABiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIH
CAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQA
BiABDIHCAgQABiABDIHCAkQABiABNIBCDYwNDBqMGo
3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&safe=active&ssui=o

Big Bad Boats
Nathanael takes a deeper look at
how boats can disrupt marine
creatures.
Imagine many broken turtle shells on the beach…
In 2000-2014 average yearly numbers of sea turtles that died from a
boat strike were 140–229 loggerheads 101–160 green turtles 20–30
Kemp's ridleys 5–10 leatherbacks and 2–4 hawksbills.
Turtles get struck by ships,boats and vessels due to this turtles get
flippers removed, shells amputated, broken or flippers amputated as
well. People may argue blocking turtle-rich ocean routes is necessary
for marine life protection.Hence the meeting in Tanzania (on 27 June
2024) to discuss pressing conservation issues for marine turtles in the
Indian Ocean and South-East Asia region. Several conservation
measures were decided upon at the 9th Meeting of the Signatory
States to the Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation and
Management of Marine Turtles and their Habitats of the Indian Ocean
and South-East Asia. These include the approval of guidelines for
identifying essential turtle habitats, suggestions for beach
management and hatchery procedures, and the implementation of a
Single Species Action Plan for the critically endangered hawksbill
turtle. The State of Kuwait, which is home to five of the seven marine
turtle species, signed the agreement on the last day of the convention,
making it the 36th Signatory State.
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild
Animals has a number of specialized agreements, including the MOU.
Effects of a boat collision: NOOA fisheries

"The need for increased efforts to conserve migratory species
of animals has never been greater. I am pleased that this
meeting agreed on a number of key commitments for the
conservation of marine turtles, underscoring the importance
of international cooperation to achieve shared objectives.”
Amy Fraenkel, CMS Executive Secretary
Boat Collisions/Impacts On turtles
Collisions may occur anywhere ships cross paths with marine life.
Marine animals can be difficult for a ship operator to see because
they are not always clearly visible from the surface.
This simply has to do with ship operators sailing where they
should not sail over. Many marine life would be saved if ship
operators would check over their sailing path.
When marine animals and sea turtles are hit by ships, they
frequently suffer severe injuries or lose their lives. Larger marine
animal collisions have the potential to destroy ships and seriously
injure humans, sometimes fatally.
Nasty Negative Ship Noises
According to recent studies, low-frequency disturbances below
1,000 Hz, such as the sounds of waves breaking or ship motors,
are what sea turtles are most sensitive to. Similar to most fish
species, sea turtles have a limited hearing range when compared to
marine animals.
Sea turtles are particularly susceptible to low-frequency
disturbances below 1,000 Hz, such as ship motor noise or the
sounds of breaking waves, according to recent research. Sea
turtles and most fish species have a limited hearing range in
comparison to other marine animals.
It is commonly known that marine turtles respond to water sounds
in distinct ways. Their safety, ability to reproduce, and energy
budgets may all be impacted by the behavioral changes.
The animal's hearing sensitivity decreases as a result of the noise
exposure, a phenomenon known as a transient threshold shift
(TTS). A data gap exists for aquatic turtles in general and
endangered sea turtles in particular because there are few TTS
investigations in turtle species.
Bibliography
NOAA: Sea Turtles in a Sea of Sound
IOSEA Marine Turtles: Press Release: Actions to Strengthen
Marine Turtle Conservation agreed at UN Meeting in
Tanzania
Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of
Wild Animals: Amy Fraenkel, CMS Executive Secretary
EDITOR’S NOTE
DESPITE ALL THE PROBLEMS CAUSED BY BOATS, KURUMBA RELIED
ON TWO SPEED BOATS AND SEA PLANES TO TRANSPORT HER TO
THE OLIVE RIDLEY PROJECT HOSPITAL. ONCE AGAIN, WE SEE
THAT OUR CHOICES AND ACTIONS MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

In our next edition…
Can grade 6
rescue Aisha?
Join us for our next edition to find out more about our precious
turtles. Read more articles and find out how our students are
recycling plastic and earning minimum wage to sponsor Aisha.