Why do sea turtles disappear in the ocean? New study, tried to understand how to baby sea turtles travel and what happens to the in the ocean.
Oceans are one of the greatest mysteries on Earth. Many of the things happening under its deep waters cannot be figure out by humans.
Sea turtles are known to often get lost inside the water but a new study has managed to understand the strange phenomenon. The research has followed 44 young sea turtles which have been tracked by satellite and researchers have tagged them in the Gulf of Mexico.
The lead researchers of the study, doctor Kate Mansfield from the University of Central Florida stated that the main idea of the research was to understand which is the trajectory young sea turtles use when traveling in the water, as this would allow scientists a way to protect them more.
Protecting the sea turtles is critical if we want to keep these animals from extinction. Presently there are on Earth seven sea turtles species and all of them are threatened with extinction.
For the experiment, scientists have attached on the baby sea turtles, tags that have been specially designed to work with solar power. The baby turtles they used, were caught from the gulf.
While they are traveling in the deep waters, these turtles are lost for years, and their where about is a mystery and is very difficult to catch them. In order to capture a sea turtle, scientists most of the time are obliged to travel more than 100 km off shore, and most of the times they com back unsuccessful.
There were times when they would come across a group of 10 baby sea turtles but it took some time for them to capture the number they needed, explained doctor Putman, from the Southeast Fisheries Science Centre.It happened many times, for them to come across turtles which were not sea turtles.
Researchers were looking for a precise sea turtle species, respectively the Kemp Ridley, which is among the most numerous turtle species living in the golf. However, researchers choose to tag green sea turtles even though they were known to nest at about 1,000 miles from the south of Costa Rica.
At the beginning scientists were slightly skeptical about tagging the green sea turtles because they considered they didn’t have a large enough number of them and it might turn out to be a waste.
They discovered that these turtles were much more numerous so they decided to investigate what they were doing. Eventually, scientists managed to tag 20 Kemps Ridley sea turtles and 24 green turtles with the ages starting from six months up to two years.
Researchers were surprise to notice the big difference both of these turtles species have shown, when it comes to their ocean travel. For examples, the green turtles had a really big desire of heading east, most of the time while the Kemp Ridley sea turtles have shown that their instinct was telling them to head up north.
Image Source: what-do-turtles-eat.com
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