Identifying turtles

Neophytes (turtles assumed to be nesting for the first time) are given tags and a unique drill pattern in the back of their shell. Holes are drilled through the translucent part of the supracaudal scutes, where there is no vascular tissue.

1 month down, 5 to go!

Photo (by Dominic Tilley): WE5252 returning to sea at 5:30AM on June 30th, 2011.

The Jumby Bay Hawksbill Project’s 25th season has begun rapidly, with 32 turtles identified after only a month of patrolling. Preseason patrols in May revealed 8 nests, bringing the total to 56 nests. Despite changes in beach landscape due to erosion and seaweed buildup in the off-season, turtles have been nesting more successfully this year. So far this season, successful nest attempts have outnumbered unsuccessful attempts or ‘false crawls’, contrary to what has been shown in previous years. Turtles have been nesting across all sections of Pasture Beach, even where activity has traditionally been sporadic (e.g. the middle of the beach containing vegetation islands).

5 of the 32 individuals are first-time nesters, and were given flipper tags and unique drill patterns in their shells for future identification. An additional 7 are second-time nesters, and another 9 are third-time nesters, providing evidence that young mothers compose a substantial part of nesting cohorts on Jumby Bay. Several veteran mothers have also shown up this season, including PPN075, tagged in 1989 and on her 7th nesting season, QQB933, tagged in 1991 and on her 9th nesting season, and QQZ108, tagged in 1993 and on her 8th nesting season.

Looking forward to a busy season!

Turtles in the news

An interesting article on the BBC web site, reported the stranding of tens of turtles of the Queensland coast in Australia. Reading the article, which is accompanied by a beautiful Leatherback picture, we find out that the turtles are likely to be starving and or cold stunned. Yasi, a category 5 Hurricane, struck the Queensland coast in early February 2011, damaging the barrier reef and the seagrass beds.

Picture linked in the BBC article - Leatherback turtle.

Well leatherbacks don’t eat seagrass so what is the problem? 

The last paragraph reveals that:

‘The coastal waters of Queensland are important breeding grounds for several species of marine turtles, including the Loggerhead, Hawksbill and Flatback.’

Hawksbills mainly eat sponges, Loggerheads feed on invertebrates, so it leaves us with the Flatback, Natator depressus. They have a varied diet including seagrass and other mollusks and jelly fish; so surely one food source being destroyed shouldn’t be a cause to them washing up...

No content with the article and the explanation, and having a feeling that the article may be talking about Green turtles, a few minutes investigation find an article on abc Far NorthQueensland. Now they should have a bit more information… and they do:

"The seagrass has been destroyedand these animals, the green [turtles], that live off it are are literallystarving," Dr Gilbert said.

So Yasi seems to be the culprit, but the victims, as suspected were the Greens!

Green turtles mainly eat seagrass and their destruction during the hurricane is meaning they are going hungry. However seagrass beds face many threats, not only hurricanes and in years to come this sort of thing may become a more regular occurrence.

edit December 5th: Seabeds recover, turtle strandings down.