Endangered Species Day is May 15. To celebrate the achievements of the Endangered Species Act and bring attention to the species that benefit from its protection, Sea Turtle Conservancy is hosted its first Endangered Species Day Writing Competition! Read the winning entries below.
Poetry Category Winner:
“Worth More Than Gold” by Sarvesh
One said,
I need help,
The other sighed
It wasn’t new.
Why is their life
Worth less than gold?
Why are their stories,
Animals, species,
Left untold?
Forests fall without a sound,
Ancient homes crash to the ground.
Trees that stood for centuries long,
Disappear as cities grow strong.
In icy lands where snow once stayed,
The polar bears start to fade.
Hunting seals on thin ice,
Paying for our warmer price.
In oceans deep and waters wide,
Coral reefs have slowly died.
Bright with colour, once alive,
Now they struggle to survive.
Turtles swim through plastic seas,
Mistaking trash for food with ease.
Whales grow silent, fewer songs,
Their journeys filled with human wrongs.
Tigers stalk through shrinking land,
Victims of a poacher’s hand.
Striped shadows in forests bare,
Fighting loss with quiet stare.
Elephants walk where herds once grew,
Now paths are empty, skies less blue.
Ivory taken, lives destroyed,
For trinkets people once enjoyed.
Rhinos fall for worthless horns,
Left alone in broken thorns.
Gorillas hide in forests thin,
Watching their whole world cave in.
Birds no longer fill the sky,
Their calls replaced by engines cry.
Wings that carried songs of spring
Are silenced by our reckless swing.
“Do we not see?” the speaker cried,
“As habitats are pushed aside.
We trade their homes for roads and lights,
And steal away their ancient rights.”
The other answered, soft and slow,
“We value what can shine and glow.
Gold and silver catch the eye,
But life we let just pass us by.”
But what is gold when forests die?
What use is wealth when seas run dry?
What good are jewels we hold so tight
If Earth itself fades from sight?
Each creature plays a vital part,
A living thread, a beating heart.
A web so delicate, yet strong,
That humans have been disturbed for long.
If bees disappear from the air,
Flowers fade everywhere.
If oceans lose their living reef,
Shorelines crumble into grief.
This planet is not ours alone,
Not made of steel, or glass, or stone.
It breathes through fur, and scale, and wing,
Through every wild and living thing.
And in that vast and rolling sea,
A quiet ancient memory
Moves with patience, calm, and grace
The turtle’s slow and steady pace.
They’ve crossed the oceans for millions of years,
Through shifting tides and changing spheres.
Guided by moonlight, stars, and sand,
Returning always to their land.
But now those shores are lined with light,
That steals the darkness of the night.
Hatchlings crawl the way they see,
Away from waves, away from sea.
Tiny flippers scrape the ground,
No guiding moonlight to be found.
Confused by buildings, roads, and glare,
They wander lost in human care.
Plastic drifts where jellyfish should be,
A deadly trap in open sea.
They eat what we have thrown away,
And slowly fade day after day.
Fishing nets like ghosts remain,
Invisible threads of silent pain.
A turtle caught, unable to rise,
Struggles for breath beneath the skies.
What crime have they committed here,
To earn a fate we should all fear?
They ask for nothing we can’t give
Clean seas, dark shores, a place to live.
The first one whispered, filled with dread,
“What happens when their kind is dead?”
The answer came, both sad and true:
“The loss of them diminishes us too.”
For turtles keep the oceans right,
They graze the seagrass, day and night.
They help the reefs, the fish, the tide,
In ways we often push aside.
Without them, balance starts to break,
A chain of loss we cannot fake.
A world unravels, thread by thread,
Because of careless paths we tread.
So let us learn before too late,
Before we seal their ancient fate.
Turn off the lights along the shore,
Use less plastic than before.
Protect the beaches where they lay.
Their fragile eggs in sand each day.
Keep oceans clean, let waters be
A place where turtles can live free.
For life is rare, and life is gold,
More precious than the gems we hold.
And in their eyes, dark, deep, and wise,
A silent, urgent pleading lies.
One said,
“I need help.”
Now we know
It’s time to help.
Essay Category Winner:
“Bottle Caps” by Enakshi Mandal
I used to collect bottle caps when I was younger. Not because they were pretty or rare, but because they were everywhere. They piled up under vending machines near the pier and rolled into the cracks of wooden planks. I thought if I gathered enough, I could build something out of them: a wall, a raft, anything. My parents laughed when I said I’d float to another country on my cap raft. I never told them that later, when I found one half buried in sand, I imagined a hatchling trying to climb over it.
The first time I saw a hawksbill turtle was on a cloudy afternoon near Shek O beach. It wasn’t alive, though its shell still had a dull shine. A group of hikers stopped to look for a second, then went back to their phones. I sat there for a while. The scutes along its carapace were sharp and uneven, overlapping like rough tiles. I remember wishing I had a brush to clean the sand off, even though that wouldn’t change anything. The tide moved fast, hiding its marks as soon as I looked away.
Later that summer, our biology class spent two weeks recording nesting signs for a project. We marked faint trails with small wooden stakes and wrote down the GPS coordinates. The sand looked ordinary until I started seeing it differently. Pitting from flippers, uneven mounds where nests had been covered, bits of bleached coral or seaweed tangled in them. We never touched the nests, but when I crouched near one, I could hear the hum of the waves echoing underneath, and I wondered how much life hid there quietly, waiting.
Some mornings started before sunrise. We worked with headlamps, and my notebook pages curled from the damp air. Sometimes we found predator tracks: dogs, crabs, even one from a small monitor lizard. Our teacher said hawksbill hatchlings had low survival rates. It sounded heavy, yet I kept thinking that even one reaching the sea was enough reason to keep count. I imagined that small creature pushing through sand and foam, its beak shaped mouth opening slightly as it faced the dark water.
When the hatchlings began emerging, they looked smaller than I had imagined. Their shells were soft and slightly translucent, and their eyes reflected the red light from our lamps. Some turned away from the sea, drawn toward reflections from buildings. We shielded them with pieces of cardboard and guided them down. They didn’t move gracefully, they crawled, slowed, stopped, and tried again. That clumsy motion felt real. Nothing perfect about it, nothing staged. Just living things insisting on movement.
We released counted hatchlings into the water after dusk. The beach went quiet once they disappeared under the waves, only foam left behind. I remember walking back and kicking something small beside my shoe. A bottle cap. Rusted, still catching light.
That night, I washed it and kept it in my pocket. I told myself I’d stop collecting them, but I didn’t. I still pick them up whenever I go to the beach. I don’t build walls anymore, but when I drop one into the recycling bin, I think of the hatchlings. I hope they’ve grown big enough to cruise through coral fields and glide past reefs glowing in the sun. Maybe some have come back to nest on the same beaches. Maybe they’re swimming past all the bottle caps I never found. Either way, they’re still out there, moving forward.
I think about that old dream of building something out of what I’d found. It wasn’t a raft or a wall, but maybe it turned into a habit, a way of seeing small things and fixing them before they pile up. It’s slow work and often unnoticed, but it feels good. I still believe small things add up to something larger, and maybe one day, the turtles will have one less thing to climb over.
Short Story Category Winner:
“One Day” by Lisa Marina Niepelt
There was a smiling young woman in a turquoise t-shirt, covered in sand, on a beautiful beach somewhere tropical at sunrise. She was gently tapping the sand to create what looked like a smooth slide on the beach leading into the glittering ocean. At the beginning of the slide there was a hole in the sand – something was beginning to move inside. Something tiny. There were sea turtles! With watery eyes reflecting the ocean’s dazzling shine, the woman explained in a calm and proud voice that these were Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle hatchlings and that she was making their way into their new life somewhat easier. “One day, each individual will come back here to leave their own legacy,” she said directly into the camera.
A girl double-tapped her phone screen, closed the app and put her phone away. She had never seen anything so small, so cute, yet already so full of life and dedication, as if nothing could hold them back from reaching the ocean. And it wasn’t AI-generated – what she saw was real life, real nature, happening right now somewhere on the other side of the globe! She repeated the name in her head “Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles. Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles”, trying to imprint it in her short-term memory.
Sitting in her room, she looked outside. Rain, concrete, people rushing from one place to another, sad faces between the fading walls of grey. She picked up her phone again and out of curiosity, she typed in the search bar “Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles”. A few clicks turned into more than she intended: statistics, maps, and terms like “world’s most endangered species of sea turtles” or “declining numbers” that deeply unsettled her. From that evening on, Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles had found a permanent place inside her heart. She learned about bycatch and light pollution long before her classmates cared about anything beyond exams. That’s when she first said it, more like an internal conversation with her future self:
One day, I will join a sea turtle conservation program! One day, I will help them, too! But before, I need to finish school first – and I know too little about them yet.
Years had passed the way they always do, quietly at first, then all at once. The girl had finished school, passed all her exams, some of them with distinction. She grew older, sharper, but the dream didn’t disappear. Though it moved slightly to the side, like a bookmark in a novel she had not yet finished.
Meanwhile, the thought of this one reel about the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles she had seen a few years ago manifested into a secret obsession of hers. She kept a printed picture of a hatchling on its way to the ocean on her pinboard which she was looking at every morning after waking up and every night before going to bed. The thought of this small but strong animal existing in real life instantly put her in a good mood. When she graduated, her family celebrated with laughter, pictures and envelopes. Money. It wasn’t much but she intended to save up for a car. “Use it for something meaningful,” her grandmother said.
That night, she sat on her bed, opened her laptop and typed: “kemp’s ridleys sea turtle conservation donation”. Images flooded her screen: rescues, hatchlings and volunteers smiling.
She clicked on the “donation” button.
Ten dollars?
Twenty.
Fifty?
She hesitated.
“Ten dollars won’t change anything”, she thought. “It’s almost embarrassing”. She closed the tab and swore to herself:
One day, I will have enough money to make a sufficient donation. One day, I will donate! But before, I need to find a job first – and there will be others who support them in the meantime.
University brought a new rhythm, faster, louder. Life expanded in several directions but the girl still kept her dream of supporting her favorite animal: the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle.
One evening after her lectures, the girl stood behind a bar, the air thick with music and laughter. Glasses clinking. Her hands moved automatically when someone called “Two mojitos, please!” – she grabbed a handful of plastic straws, sliding them into the drinks with a routine flick.
When she finally got home, she collapsed on the couch and started scrolling.
That’s when she saw it. A video.
A sea turtle, large and majestic, thrashing weakly in shallow water. A hand reached toward its face, and she frowned, confused – until she saw it. A plastic straw lodged deep inside the turtle’s nostril.
The animal writhed as the person tried to pull it free. The camera was shaking. When the straw finally came out, the turtle jerked violently, then went silent for a moment before breathing again. One could hear the person behind the camera crying.
So did the girl holding the phone. Tears fell on her screen as she realized that her hands, her very own hands, were placing plastic straws into glasses, over and over, night after night.
She sat there for a long time, staring at nothing. Silence. Every day since then, her dedication to do something about plastic pollution grew stronger. But where to start? “There is so much plastic in the world, so one bar, one person wouldn’t make a difference now,” she thought to herself. But she was convinced:
One day, I will raise my voice against marine plastic pollution. One day, I will take action! But before, I need to build a large audience – and I don’t even know where to start.
The moment came on an ordinary Saturday morning. She was sitting at her kitchen table, coffee cooling beside her. She was scrolling through the news without really reading.
Then a headline caught her eye.
The words didn’t make sense at first.
She blinked.
Read them again:
Confirmed Extinction in the Wild of Kemp ’s Ridley Sea Turtles – Scientists Overestimated Populations for Decades
Researchers had believed the population was endangered, but still holding on. However, exponentially increased plastic pollution in the ocean paired with decreasing conservation resources and efforts to prevent coastal armoring and boat strikes had led to only a few living specimens left in a breeding program.
Her chest tightened in a way she had never felt before. It was not sadness. It was not grief. Something heavier. Something final. She started scrolling frantically, searching for corrections, updates, anything to contradict the words she just read. But there was nothing.
A photograph filled the screen: a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, tiny but mighty, gliding through impossibly blue water. Beautiful. Alive. A past that no longer existed. Her vision blurred. She was held in place by the weight of the actions she never took. Actions that might have helped her favorite animals to still exist in the wild.
When she had found the strength to formulate clear thoughts again, she realized that something had changed. She had changed. Her thoughts had changed. She finally understood that every one day collapsed into a single, unbearable truth:
One day had been too late.
Without hesitation, she researched the breeding program mentioned in the article and immediately donated all the tips she had saved up from last month’s shifts at the bar.
There was also a button: “Get involved”.
She clicked, read and made a decision.
One day, a young woman is standing in a classroom in front of a curious group of individuals, next to a beach. She is wearing a t-shirt that reads “STAFF” on her back. Ocean waves can be heard through the open windows which face some large basins outside. Her sun-kissed face is smiling while she explains why one day she suddenly stopped using plastic straws and never looked back. The crowd, visibly eager to learn and excited for what’s up next in her presentation, was murmuring with wide, astounded eyes before she connected her laptop to the projector.
“I am now going to show you a video we took just this morning. It was magical! A miracle! This is the first nest of living Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle hatchlings in the wild after years of work back from their ‘extinct in the wild’ status!” announced the young woman with tears of joy in her eyes. She paused for a moment.
“This experience has taught us that there is never ‘the right time’ to donate, advocate or to get involved. But starting today instead of one day is what actually makes a difference. In that sense, we can still learn a lot from the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles – ,”
she said in a humble voice, “The hatchlings never ask themselves whether they are ready for the ocean, do they?”
Then the video started:
There was a smiling young woman in a turquoise t-shirt, covered in sand, on a beautiful beach somewhere tropical at sunrise…
Kids Category Winner:
“The Day Liam the Leatherback Turtle Ate a Plastic Bag” by Hamza Bajwa, Age 7
Liam the Leatherback was swimming around with his best buddy, Rory the remora fish. Rory loved to hitchhike on Liam’s back and go for rides. They were such good friends that they would do everything together, like going to the movies and visiting each other’s houses.
One day, on the way to Rory’s house, Liam saw a plastic bag and thought it was a jellyfish, so he swallowed it. When he ate the bag, it tasted like crunchy paper, and he realized it was a plastic bag, but it was too late! He knew he was going to get sick. His stomach was churning. He started feeling weak and his stomach hurt badly. This was the third time this had happened that week! Rory said, “Oh no, Liam, not again!”
Rory tried to pull the plastic bag out with a stick because the handle was still sticking out. She could not pull it out because the bag was so far inside his mouth. Next, Rory bit part of the plastic bag handle and swam backward. She pulled and pulled, but she couldn’t get it out.
Rory and Liam felt so disheartened. Then suddenly, while they were swimming, Liam and Rory got scooped up into the scientists’ boat. They were both terrified. The scientists took Liam and Rory to a room where they would be safe. Soon, Liam realized that they were trying to help them. After that, the scientists took out the plastic bag with a big metal tool. He felt like vomiting, but he was glad it was out.
Next, the scientists put Rory in a little tank with Liam. They picked Liam up and put him on a scale to measure how heavy he was. The scientists wrote down notes about Liam. They also measured how long he was. Liam and Rory did not understand why they were doing this, but at least it did not hurt. The scientists had kind faces and showed that they were researching sea turtles. Knowing more about them would make it easier for the scientists to help them.
The scientists gave them fish and toys so they could see how they would interact with them. Liam was hungry. The scientists then gave them a small jellyfish, some tiny fish, and seaweed to see what they would eat and what they would not. Rory and Liam had a feast. Liam loved the jellyfish, but he didn’t like the seaweed at all. After his meal, he felt his energy coming back.
Later, the scientists put their tank into a small boat. Liam and Rory did not know where they were going. The scientists then lifted them out of the tank and plopped them into the ocean. They were glad to be back home again. “Home sweet home!” they both said.
It was finally nice to be free of the plastic bag. Rory wished she could make a device that would tell Liam whether he was looking at a jellyfish or a plastic bag, so this would never happen again. Rory didn’t know how to make such a device, but she wished the scientists would make one someday.
