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.
Protecting Endangered Leatherbacks
In October of 2021, Upwell and our partners from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tagged one of the largest leatherbacks ever encountered in the California Current foraging zone weighing in at 1,419 pounds! This massive male leatherback was dubbed “Bumpy” because of the distinctive bumps on the rear of his carapace, which were likely caused by a prior ship strike. Find out more about where Bumpy has traveled.
We all know buying local reduces carbon emissions and can help combat climate change, but did you know it can also help reduce threats to sea turtles? International shipping often relies on the use of massive cargo ships to transport goods across our oceans. Sea turtle migration paths can intersect with vessel traffic and nearshore shipping lanes can overlap with important foraging habitats.
Learn about the female turtle tagged by NOAA and Upwell in 2020 whose transmitter is still reporting. She was tagged in September 2019, and she returned to same area where she was tagged in the Gulf of the Farallones this year on 31 July 2020. It’s exciting when we see one of these movement records close the loop! Additional leatherback sightings in the Monterey Bay have been reported recently.
Data collected at nesting beaches give us only a brief glimpse into sea turtles’ intricate life histories. Satellite tags are one of the best tools available to collect data on sea turtle movements and behaviors in marine habitats. But where tags are deployed matters. Deploying tags at nesting beaches means we are limiting our research scope to the females within a population that are nesting in a given year.
At the turn of the millennium, the origin of leatherback turtles in California waters was unproven. Many assumed they originated from nesting beaches in Mexico or Costa Rica; few could have imagined the extent of their travels across the entire Pacific Ocean. We know now that West Pacific leatherbacks only make their epic trans-Pacific migration about every three to five years. Unfortunately, the batteries on early satellite tags didn’t last long enough to track their whole migration.
