Mark and follow the Turtle Tour

Last year, a logger named Eliza Ann won the crown. This year, Lucaya, the fast lute, took the lead to take the lead. Every summer, a handful of sea turtles take the water to participate in the Sea Turtle Conservancy"S, Turtles Tour – an underwater marathon that combines competition and conservation.

This year, 17 sea turtles have entered the Tour de Turtles, and the range is varied and includes leatherback turtles, loggerheads, green turtles and hawksbill turtles. The organizers released competitors from nesting areas in Costa Rica, Panama, Nevis and Florida. The winner will be the turtle swimming the furthest during its three months of migration.

Small tracking labels on large surfaces

Tagged and monitored remotely, these turtles do not just head to the finish line, they also provide scientists with key data collected via satellite telemetry.

Sea turtles spend most of their lives in the water – feeding, mating and traveling long distances – but in the vast ocean, scientists struggle to observe their behavior, pushing them to turn to technology.

Each turtle participating in the Turtles Tour is equipped with a small, microprocessor-controlled, low power Platform Terminal Transmitter (PTT) tag.

These devices, designed to fall safely after about a year and a half, send signals to Argos tracking instruments attached to satellites in orbit whenever the turtle goes up in the air. The satellite then retransmits this information to the ground where it can be accessed via a computer.

The turtles must surface for at least three minutes to be detected, and once they detect a PTT, a satellite takes three to five minutes to record the position.

This beacon provides Turtles Tour research partners, the University of Central Florida and the Nevis Turtle Group with up-to-date location information so they can monitor competitors at every stage of the race.

Researchers map turtle routes on an online map so that sponsors, donors and supporters can follow in near real time.

Turtles swim several thousand miles in a typical ride, but the event is not limited to the distance traveled. The PTT data collected on each turtle provides a wealth of useful information, including an estimate of the number of dives made by the turtle in the previous 24 hours, the duration of its most recent dive and the water temperature.

"We can estimate the behavior of the turtles based on the information provided by the transmitters and from that we can also look at the environmental characteristics, such as the depth and temperature of the water," said Dan Evans, biologist researcher at the Sea Turtle Conservancy. "There are certainly patterns and pathways we are learning, but we are also learning their behavior."

"We have confirmation of things we know, but from time to time we get something really interesting. There is a lot of variation, even within species. It seems like every year a turtle does something different.

This year, researchers are observing Lucaya, a leatherback turtle that kisses the east coast of the United States rather than entering the deep Atlantic as expected. Through his work with the Tour, Evans discovered that leatherbacks move between a primary feeding area and a secondary feeding area, rather than sticking to a single feeding area. He also noted that leatherbacks spend more time in the Gulf of Mexico than previously thought and that hawksbill turtles, a species that tends to remain local, actually cross the Caribbean in some cases.

"It was really cool to see," he said. "It's a pretty incredible migration."

Evolution of technology

Tagging turtles is not a new science, but as technology evolves, research has become more efficient, more rational and more effective. At the launch of the Turtles Tour in 2008, the transmitters were larger and more vulnerable to the elements than the modern version.

"They started like bricks with antennas coming out of the top," Evans said. "We had to build a barrier to protect them in the water, but now they have built-in barriers. Emitters have become smaller, more compact and more hydrodynamic.

They also have a longer battery life that allows them to operate for five years.

"This means that we are able to track turtles longer than in the past and that we can learn more about their complete migration from their nesting beaches to feeding areas," Evans said.

Scientists still have a lot to learn, and Evans hopes that as technology develops, she will paint a more complete picture of what sea turtles do in the deep ocean.

"I think that the accuracy of the transmitters will improve over time. My dream transmitter would include a camera that would allow us to really see what kind of interaction between turtles and their environment. "

He would also like to make better use of GIS mapping technology by creating a program to overlay layers of variables on the turtle route, such as water temperature and chlorophyll levels.

Strengthen awareness

Six out of seven marine turtle species are listed as endangered or critically endangered. Hunt, fishing lines and plastic debris kill all adult turtles. Natural predators and various threats to neonates and nesting beaches of sea turtles result in very low nesting survival rates. The Sea Turtle Conservancy estimates that only one in 1,000 survives until adulthood.

The data collected through the Turtles Tower aims to promote the conservation and education of sea turtles. In 2010, the results of the tour were used to educate stakeholders about the need to protect marine turtles from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

"The leatherback turtles of Costa Rica and Panama use the Gulf of Mexico much more than anyone thought, [but] the lutes did not participate in the discussions until they shared the tracking information we had, "Evans said. "This allowed them to be included in the discussions on the species to be protected".

Awareness is a key element of the Tour's message. Turtles are sponsored and / or adopted by donors, and each swims for a specific cause. This year's turtles swim to highlight the threats of commercial trawling, water quality, pollution, beach erosion, and harvesting of adults and eggs.

The follow-up efforts of the tour highlighted one thing: turtles do not respect borders, making their survival an international problem.

"Turtles are international travelers, they have no borders or passports. They go where they need to go, so cooperation between nations is really important, "said Evans. "With our data, we can identify feeding areas and see if they are in protected areas. If they are in protected areas, then one may wonder if the protections are sufficient for marine turtles. "

Follow this year's Turtles Tour, which ends November 2, 2018.

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