A 900-pound leatherback sea turtle named Dingle after the Irish resort town where she was rescued and satellite-tagged last year is a real traveler. Eight months ago, the turtle became snared in lobster pots off Dingle, Ireland. She was rescued with out injury, tagged and released.
Scientists from University College Cork and the University of Wales, Swansea, say the approximately 15-year-old reptile has since travelled 5,000 miles to the Cape Verde Islands, off west Africa, and back up the European coast.
In January, she was off Senegal, where a dive in search for the turtles’ favorite meal of jellyfish took her to a depth of more than 1,640 feet.
Leatherback sea turtles do not mate every year and it’s unknown which nesting beach Dingle was born on and will return to eventually to lay eggs.
In 1980, there were an estimated 115,000 adult female leatherbacks worldwide, but now there are fewer than 25,000, the report said.
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