The Stanford-affiliated Center for Ocean Solutions (COS) in Monterey, Calif. released research last week connecting a baby turtle’s chance at survival with the location of its birth. The study found that strong currents off the coast of Costa Rica are particularly successful at shepherding baby turtles to the safety of offshore waters. This information, coupled with the researchers’ look at turtle breeding grounds, may direct future conservation efforts.

 

According to former COS marine biologist and executive director of the Stanford-affiliated Tag-a-Giant Foundation George Shillinger, the Playa Grande beach in Costa Rica is a popular breeding ground for turtles because regional winds create large eddies on the beach that provide the turtles with shelter from the elements. The vegetation in the eddies offers nutrients for the breeding turtles.

 

The strong ocean currents then carry baby turtles far offshore into the warm waters that promote growth.

 

“The study shows that there are areas in this world that are special for the leatherback, and if you destroy the nesting beach, you take away from the turtles a very important launch pad,” Shillinger said in a Stanford News Service release.

 

Baby leatherback turtles are only the size of a computer mouse and could not support the size of a satellite tag or radio transmitter, so the researchers had to use computer models to simulate the path of the baby turtles in the ocean. The team entered physical oceanographic characteristics such as water temperature, sea surface height, winds and currents in the eastern Pacific region area from Mexico to Panama, where leatherbacks are known to nest.

 

The researchers then used this data to simulate the dispersal of hatchlings from four nesting beaches, providing for the first time an idea of the locations to which baby turtles disperse.

 

“Once we put all of this together we might start to really understand the life history of these turtles from emergence to adulthood,” Shillinger said. “And that information helps us develop conservation strategies that link leatherback nesting beaches, hatchling highways and nursery habitats with migration corridors and foraging hotspots for juvenile and adult turtles across the Pacific.”

 

The study was released online last week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B British scientific journal.

 

— Alice Phillips