Sea Turtle Monitoring, Leatherbacks
Kayla Sargent
First Leatherback Tagged in the California ...

In September 2025, the collaborative Upwell and NOAA leatherback monitoring team tagged our first leatherback in the California Current since 2022! The adult male leatherback weighing 438 kg (almost 1,000 pounds) was fitted with satellite and acoustic tags to collect critical data on movements and habitat use. Read more about what Ricky has been up to since he was tagged in September.

First Leatherback Tagged in the California Current Since 2022
Kayla Sargent
Where do you spend your lost years, little ...

In late October, a collaborative team of researchers from Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation and Upwell took a boat into the swift Agulhas Current, the southwest boundary current of the Indian Ocean that runs down the east coast of South Africa. There, they released 12 tiny loggerhead turtles with satellite tags attached to their carapace (top shells) in an effort to understand how these turtles are using this oceanic highway. See where these turtles have traveled over their first weeks in the ocean!

Where do you spend your lost years, little turtle?
Kayla Sargent
Diving Into Underwater Photography with Nuno ...

Nuno Vasco Rodrigues is a Marine Biologist and researcher at MARE IPLeiria. He was named “Conservation Photographer of the Year” by Ocean Geographic Society in 2021. For the past three years, Nuno has photographed Upwell’s work tagging juvenile loggerhead turtles in the Azores Archipelago in partnership with the COSTA Project and the University of the Azores, which is part of Upwell’s Lost Years Initiative. Nuno took some time to chat with us about the highlights and challenges of documenting sea turtle releases underwater. 

Diving Into Underwater Photography with Nuno Vasco Rodrigues
Kayla Sargent
Researcher Interview: Analyzing Data from ...

With a team of collaborators, we tested new specially-designed prototypes of Lotek microsatellite tags on 160 juvenile sea turtles of four species in the North Atlantic. The data from these tags was published in a new article, "Novel Microsatellite Tags Hold Promise for Illuminating the Lost Years in Four Sea Turtle Species." We sat down with lead-author Tony Candela to talk about this article, his process as lead-author, and the important implications of these findings for the bio-logging community.

Researcher Interview: Analyzing Data from Microsatellite Tags on Juvenile Sea Turtles
Bycatch, Sea Turtle Tracking
Kayla Sargent
Leatherback Saved by Fisher-Researcher ...

When fishermen and researchers collaborate, they create opportunities to amplify efforts for the research and conservation of sea turtles. This past spring, Upwell participated in these efforts by providing a satellite tag for Liam Neythan, a leatherback sea turtle that was saved in Sinaloa, Mexico. Our collaborators, the fishers Edmundo Rafael Garcías Burgos and Mariano García Olivas, as well as Dr. Alan Zavala Norzagaray and the CIIDIR IPN Unidad Sinaloa are the key collaborators and heroes in this story.

Leatherback Saved by Fisher-Researcher Collaboration in Sinaloa

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Pacific Leatherback Monitoring Drives Oceanwide Conservation Planning

Pacific Leatherback Monitoring Drives Oceanwide Conservation Planning

Since 2019, Upwell Turtles and the NOAA NMFS Southwest Fisheries Science Center’s Marine Turtle Ecology & Assessment Program have collaborated to conduct in-water monitoring efforts for West Pacific leatherbacks occupying foraging habitats off the US West Coast. Learn more about the advances of this ongoing collaboration and how it has expanded through the formation of international partnerships and innovative uses of predictive modeling aimed at improving the management and conservation of leatherback turtles.