Satellite Trackers Uncover Secrets of Sea Turtles’ “Lost Years”
Scientists using satellite tracking technology have made a breakthrough in understanding the critical early life stages of sea turtles, shedding light on a period known as the “lost years,” The Associated Press reports.
For decades, researchers have been puzzled about what happens to young sea turtles between the time they hatch and leave the beach and when they return to coastal waters nearly grown, a span that can last from one to ten years.
New research, published Tuesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, begins to fill in this knowledge gap.
For over a decade, Dr. Kate Mansfield and her colleagues have been attaching GPS tags to the rapidly growing shells of young, wild turtles in the Gulf of Mexico. Researchers navigated small boats to locate juvenile turtles drifting among algae, eventually tagging 114 animals, including endangered green turtles, loggerheads, hawksbills, and Kemp’s ridleys.
The tracking data challenged long-held assumptions. Scientists previously believed that tiny turtles passively drifted with ocean currents. However, by comparing the turtles’ location data with the routes of drifting buoys released simultaneously, researchers confirmed that the turtles were not simply “going with the flow.” More than half of the buoys washed ashore, while the turtles did not.
The tracking data also showed more variability in turtle locations than expected, with the young turtles moving between continental shelf waters and the open ocean.
The success of the research hinged on the painstaking effort of locating the turtles and developing flexible, solar-powered tags that could adhere to the shells long enough to transmit valuable data.
