Earth & Sky

Ecologist says Pacific Ocean is a turtle highway

"If we don't take steps, the leatherback sea turtle could go extinct on our watch," said George Shillinger of the Census of Marine Life sea turtle tagging team.

DB: Jeffrey Polovina is a marine ecologist at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Hawaii.

JB: He tags sea animals to learn where they go, where they feed and where they mate. The tags relay the data to scientists via a system of satellites.

DB: Tags have revealed that loggerhead turtles travel back and forth across the Pacific Ocean along a transpacific “turtle highway.” Polovina told us that turtles seem to congregate midway through their migration at a mid–ocean hotspot – just west of the international dateline.

Jeffrey Polovina: It’s just amazing that these loggerhead turtles and I think many of the other turtles as well that we track really seem to have a map of the ocean. We’ll see them go into eddies, which are underwater cyclones and they’ll ride around the edge of these eddies for months at a time. These are big features. They’ll get off exactly where they got on. They’ll go through currents that move them north or south or east or west, but then they’ll readjust their position.

JB: Since the animals obviously know where important feeding and breeding places are, Polovina says scientists are thinking about using the animals to gather data that is typically collected by floating research instruments. He calls it “bio–logging” – relying on fleets of animals instead of oceangoing research vessels.

DB: Our thanks to the National Science Foundation – where discoveries begin. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.

Written by Naomi Starobin

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1 Comments for Ecologist says Pacific Ocean is a turtle highway

1. 1

   Nov 2, 01:20 PM #

   bob says:

   hey i like ur picture of the turtle it looks like he is goin to give me a hug …..lol!!!!