After watching Finding Nemo, I thought it would be amazingly cool to be a sea turtle. Sure, some of it had to do with how cool the turtles themselves were; Crush was hands-down my favorite character in the movie, and those groovy tie-dye shells were all about peace and love in the ocean and beyond. But their lives seemed cool, too; they could live to be 150 years old, they got to swim all over the place and see the ocean, they had the cutest babies alive, and they got to practically surf the East Australian Current. All in all, that sounded like a pretty amazing life!

But the reality is that sea turtles face a much harsher life than we realize. These beautiful creatures, which naturally live to be a ripe old age, often do not get the chance to live as long as nature intended due to harms inflicted by none other than—us.

Between the fishing hooks, trawling nets, and other traps we set for fish and the garbage we allow to pollute our oceans, their home has become a toxic environment. When mother sea turtles swim for weeks to get to nesting grounds to lay their eggs, they no longer face the sole threat of predators; now, they are dodging garbage and fishing equipment in a sick, modern-day, real-life version of Pitfall. Only, unlike the Atari game, death is real. That ocean is their home, not ours, and they deserve to have it protected from the likes of us.

But every year, this situation gets worse. There are more nets, more hooks, more trash to dodge. We keep hearing about how people care about the environment—and we’re even getting tons of eco-friendly products to choose from—but we keep sending these harms their way. No matter how much we protest, not much is being done to protect these creatures from us. All six of the sea turtles that swim in U.S. waterways are now considered threatened or endangered. That’s why we need to join Oceana today in asking Congress to ensure protections for sea turtles.

Ideally, these protections would include better data collection, a sea turtle recovery plan, and an overall reduction of harm done to sea turtles through better use of turtle management. Please write to your representative today and ask that he or she help save the lives of sea turtles today. Perhaps one day the lives of turtles will once again seem like a cool way to live rather than the perilous existence turtles live today.