turtles tagged posts

For millions of years, countless sea turtles navigated the world’s oceans, migrating vast distances between foraging sites and natal nesting beaches. But today, those long journeys repeatedly expose them to harmful anthropogenic impacts and disruptive environmental changes. And despite worldwide conservation efforts, all seven sea turtle species are endangered or critically endangered at global or regional levels.

The mass movement of these, and other animals, by land, sea or air, represents one of Earth’s ancient rhythms and one of its great wonders. Those migrations also weave together vital living threads that strengthen ecosystem structure.

Now, for myriad reasons — including human-made physical hazards, climate change, pollution, habitat loss, and much more — the frayed fab...

Numbers of two Mediterranean turtle species have risen in the last three decades – but in Cyprus the recoveries are happening at different rates, new research shows. Nest counts at 28 beaches show green turtle nests increased by 162% from 1993 to 2019, while loggerhead nests rose by 46%. The research team – from the University of Exeter, the Society for the Protection of Turtles (SPOT) and Eastern Mediterranean University – say the difference is probably due to higher death rates among loggerhead turtles of all ages.

Turtles in this region used to be hunted for meat and shells, but this is now banned throughout the Mediterranean. Coupled with conservation of nesting beaches, this has allowed populations to recover – but the scientists say better protection at sea is still required.

Loggerhead Sea Turtles migrate thousands of miles through the world’s oceans, but they don’t travel solo – research shows they carry surprisingly diverse and abundant populations of tiny creatures on their shells.

A new paper published May 20 in the journal Diversity shows that loggerhead sea turtles carry an average of 34,000 individual meiofauna – tiny organisms smaller than one millimeter – on their backs. One loggerhead carried nearly 150,000 individual animals on its shell, including nematodes, crustacean larvae, and shrimp.

“There literally is a [whole] world on there,” says Jeroen Ingels, a marine ecologist at Florida State University. It’s wild to find “that kind of diversity on another organism.”

Scientists have used satellite tracking and a crime-scene technique to discover an important feeding ground for green turtles in the Mediterranean. University of Exeter researchers measured “stable isotope ratios” – a chemical signature also used by forensic scientists – to discover which foraging grounds turtles had come from to breed in Cyprus.

They discovered that Lake Bardawil, on Egypt’s north coast, is now the most important foraging ground for turtles which breed at Alagadi in Cyprus.

The researchers believe few breeding females came from the Lake Bardawil feeding ground until 2010. It is likely that changes to the ecosystem have made this shallow saline lake a top foraging site.

“Our satellite tracking of turtles breeding in Cyprus has been going on for some years,” said senior au...

An illegal trade in marine turtles is continuing despite legislation and conservation awareness campaigns, a pioneering study has shown.