Turtles in the study were less than two years old; they can take 10-20 years to reach sexual maturity
Thanks to the BBC for this story:
‘Lost’ sea turtles don’t go with the flow
A tracking study has shown that young sea turtles make a concerted effort to swim in particular directions, instead of drifting with ocean currents.
Baby turtles disappear at sea for up to a decade and it was once assumed that they spent these “lost years” drifting.
US researchers used satellite tags to track 44 wild, yearling turtles in the Gulf of Mexico and compared their movement with that of floating buoys.
They reported their findings in the journal Current Biology.
“This is the first study to release drifters with small, wild-caught yearling or neonate sea turtles in order to directly test the ‘passive drifter’ hypothesis in these young turtles,” said the paper’s senior author Dr Kate Mansfield, who runs the turtle research group at the University of Central Florida.
She and her team want to improve our understanding of these animals’ behaviour and their whereabouts at sea, in order to help protect them.
There are seven species of sea turtle and all of them are endangered or threatened.
Wrong turtles?
To test the idea that they spend their juvenile years drifting around at the mercy of the current, Dr Mansfield and her colleague Nathan Putman set about catching wild turtles and attaching specially-designed, solar-powered tags.
This is easier said than done, Dr Putman told BBC News.
“They’re not called the lost years for nothing,” he said. “These turtles are tough to catch.”…
Read the whole story here.
Organikos 