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!
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.
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.
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.
Inspired by Upwell’s collection of citizen science data to advance protections for sea turtles at sea, three biologists--informally dubbed “the turtle girls”--resolved to join the caravan of boats on the Baja Haha sailing rally to teach sailors and cruisers how to identify and report sea turtle sightings during the Baja Ha-Ha.
The leatherbacks have returned to the central California coast! In partnership with NOAA, Upwell is conducting aerial surveys to locate critically endangered leatherback turtles in California's waters. Learn more about graduate student, Sharon Hsu's first-hand experience as an Upwell Observer aboard these flights.
In 2015, Sean came face to face with one of the most insidious threats turtles face at sea: plastic. He was walking along Playa Ostional in Costa Rica with other sea turtle researchers when they spotted an olive ridley turtle with something protruding from its naris (more or less the word for a sea turtle’s nostril). As they approached the turtle, they discovered it was a piece of plastic.
Have you ever wondered how to tell whether an immature sea turtle is male or female? Or if an adult female sea turtle is preparing to lay eggs? Or whether a sea turtle with visible external fibropapilloma tumors also has hidden tumors on her internal organs? Or if she may suffer from gas bubble disease as a result of fisheries bycatch? The tools of diagnostic imaging can help answer all of these questions.
