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1:30 PM, November 25, 2008
From the Associated Press:
WELLFLEET, Mass. — A cold snap has caused a high number of endangered sea turtles to wash ashore dead on Cape Cod beaches.
Thirty Kemp's Ridley sea turtles — the world’s most endangered sea turtles — have been reported on the beaches since Thursday. Nineteen were dead.
Tony LaCasse, spokesman for the New England Aquarium in Boston, called the mortality rate "way off the charts." Sea turtles suffering from hypothermia often wash ashore in November and December.
When the animals' heart rates and body temperatures fall, they become immobile. Wind blows them to shore, where they risk freezing to death. Volunteers walk the beaches to look for stranded turtles. Survivors are brought to the aquarium, where workers try to bring up their body temperatures.
10:26 AM, October 31, 2008
Remember the sea turtle that was trapped and wounded in the San Gabriel River? Times staff writer Louis Sahagun has an update.  A rehabilitated green sea turtle the size of a manhole cover was set free in the San Gabriel River on Thursday after two months of intensive veterinary care at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.
Aquarium veterinarian Lance Adams grabbed the two ends of the 44-pound reptile's mossy carapace and let it go in the murky water under the East Second Street bridge south of the 405 Freeway, silently urging it on.
The turtle's flippers went into action and it disappeared into the green depths near the warm outflow of a Long Beach power plant where federal biologists recently discovered a resident colony of green sea turtles, about a mile upstream in a heavily industrialized stretch of the river.
"It didn't stop to say goodbye," Adams said with a smile.
The creature's release was celebrated with applause from about two dozen witnesses. Among them were biologists and staffers from a local National Marine Fisheries Service headquarters and heavy-equipment operator Dana Williams, 57, who happened to have been bicycling in the area when he caught sight of the commotion.
"This is exquisite," he said. "But they ought to put up a sign: No speed boats. Turtle sanctuary."
Read more Rehabilitated sea turtle set free »
2:11 PM, October 25, 2008
Trapped for nearly a month this summer in an intake channel near a Long Beach power plant, she was a 38-pound turtle in range of people who tried to snag it with hooks or impale her with makeshift spears.
After she was finally rescued, the green sea turtle was moved into the veterinary emergency ward at the Aquarium of the Pacific, where officials found she had suffered from a number of painful injuries: broken digits, infected lacerations in two front flippers, a 3-inch gash on her carapace and a fishing hook in her rear flipper.
The Times' Louis Sahagun writes: "She's been a good patient -- sea turtles usually are," aquarium veterinarian Lance Adams said. "Reptiles have an incredible ability to wall off infections, isolate them and heal around them."
This week, nearly two months after it was rescued, the turtle's condition had improved dramatically and it was cleared to return to the wilds within a week or two.
If the turtle's survival is remarkable, so is the place it will eventually be set free: a heavily industrialized stretch of the San Gabriel River where federal biologists recently discovered a resident colony of green sea turtles.
Federal biologists have launched a study of this unexpected colony to determine its size and, most intriguingly, why it appeared in what hardly could be called tropical waters.
The Times' has a comprehensive online package of the turtle's tale with not only Sahagun's story but a video he created (also below) and photo gallery by Mel Melcon.
--Francisco Vara-Orta
Photo: Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times
3:24 PM, October 7, 2008
From the Associated Press: MOSS LANDING, Calif.—Scientists say endangered leatherback turtles have returned to Monterey Bay to feast on jellyfish after nearly disappearing from the area in recent years.
Moss Landing Marine Laboratories researcher Scott Benson says marine biologists counted more than 300 of the giant endangered turtles in the bay this year.
Benson said a strong upwelling of nutrient-rich cold water this year brought greater stocks of jellyfish, which attracted the turtles.
Poor upwellings in previous years have sent the turtles elsewhere to find food.
The 70-million-year-old leatherback species is the largest of all sea turtles. Benson says the Pacific's leatherback population has declined by 90 to 95 percent in the last 25 years because of egg poaching and turtles getting caught in fishing gear.
Photo: Scott A. Eckert/Widecast
11:14 AM, September 29, 2008
Endangered leatherback sea turtles have been spotted again off the Central California coast after a two-year hiatus, drawn by jellyfish swarming the area, the San Francisco Chronicle reports: The leatherbacks were spotted during a monthlong survey cruise aboard a government research vessel and repeated aircraft observations. Researchers said they were seen diving for meals close to shore and snacking now and then in deeper waters much farther out.
"We're getting a better understanding of the leatherbacks and their coastal habitat here after several years when the population was much lower than usual — and after we observed none at all in 2006," said Scott Benson, chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's leatherback survey mission based in Monterey County at Moss Landing.
Spotters aboard the NOAA Twin Otter aircraft found six leatherbacks "surrounded by miles of jellyfish" — along with humpback whales and large ocean sunfish — off the San Mateo County coast and in the midst of regular cargo shipping lanes leading to and from the Golden Gate.
In one case, a leatherback was observed swimming among the jellyfish only 5 miles west of Benson's home in Moss Landing, he said. Another leatherback that was equipped with a more permanent satellite tag a year ago had returned to the same area this year, apparently after spending the winter a few hundred miles south of Hawaii along what Benson called "Jelly Lane."
Leatherbacks don't eat the jellyfish's transparent globular bells — it's the viciously stinging tentacles they love, and Benson and his colleagues found themselves "covered with stinging jellyfish slime" whenever they hauled any of the turtles aboard, Benson said.
In the last 25 years, more than 90% of the leatherback population has vanished.
According to Michael Milne of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, an environmental group based in Marin County, the abrupt decrease stems from a variety of reasons: egg-hunters raiding their nests, commercial long-line fisheries whose hooks can ensnare the turtles as "bycatch," and, most recently, the erosion of many nesting beaches because of small rises in the sea level caused by global warming.
The Moss Landing sightings aren't the only ones we've reported off the California coast: Last month, more jellyfish also meant more leatherbacks in Morro Bay. And even Texas has seen an uptick in rare leatherback sea turtle sightings.
— Francisco Vara-Orta
Photo credit: Scott A. Eckert / Widecast
5:23 PM, September 11, 2008
Hundreds of jellyfish washing up on Morro Bay beach show the population is healthy and booming, but beachgoers should be aware of possible stinging, experts say.
David Sneed of the San Luis Obispo Tribune reports: The jellyfish are likely moon jellies, a common jellyfish species that is known to breed in great numbers, said Steve Johnston, a staff member at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Occasionally, a couple of things conspire, he said, and the conditions are just right for a population explosion.
The factors that control jellyfish population are algal blooms -- which the jellies feed upon -- water temperature and currents. Jellies float at the mercy of winds and current and, inevitably, some of them drift close to the shore and get caught in the surf where they wash ashore and die, Johnston said.
On the beach, the jellies look like translucent, gelatinous blobs.
People who spend a lot of time on the water report seeing large schools of the animals floating offshore.
"The concentrations of them in some spots are pretty amazing," said Mike Harris, a marine biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game in Morro Bay.
Harris said he's also seen more leatherback sea turtles in the area. Leatherbacks feed on jellyfish.
-- Francisco Vara-Orta
Photo: Cabrillo Marine Aquarium
3:41 PM, August 12, 2008
A endangered Chinese box turtle that recently hatched at Bristol Zoo gets its close-up today with the help of a zoo curator in Bristol, England.
The turtle currently weighs just 15 grams (slightly more than half an ounce), whereas an adult box turtle weighs about 800 grams (around 1.7 pounds). The turtles can reach lengths of about 6 inches and live up to 50 years.
Chinese box turtles are hunted for their meat for use in medicine or as pets and have been listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species .
-- Francisco Vara-Orta
Photo: Matt Cardy / Getty Images
1:30 PM, June 12, 2008
Californians can proudly claim a champion in the Great Turtle Race, an international event we told you about earlier this month that tracked the journey of 11 radio-tagged leatherbacks in the Pacific Ocean toward the International Date Line.
The first to reach the finish line was a turtle named Saphira II, sponsored by the Bullis Charter School of Los Altos, Calif. Turtle enthusiasts can relive the adventure by visiting the race's website and watching an interactive recreation using a rainbow of colors to differentiate the turtles.
But Saphira II and her competitors aren't the only leatherbacks making strides on the world's shores. The New York Times is also reporting that the creatures showed up for the first time in decades on Texas tan-tinged beaches near Corpus Christi: For the first time since the 1930s, federal biologists confirmed that a leatherback sea turtle has nested on a Texas beach, at the Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi.
Last Friday, staff conducting a beach patrol found turtle tracks and a few exposed eggs. They were thought at first to be those of a green turtle. But the eggs and the width of the tracks, more than 6 feet across, were later determined by a park biologist, Cynthia Rubio, to be from a leatherback. The giant turtles, endangered around the world, have until now only been known to nest in four spots in the United States –- with about three dozen females a year laying eggs on beaches along the east coast of Florida and slightly larger nesting populations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. There is evidence of nesting in North Carolina as well.
-- Francisco Vara-Orta
Photo: Scott Benson/U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service
3:43 PM, June 2, 2008
Watching turtles race across the ocean doesn't sound like the most dynamic contest, but a group of environmentalists and scientists begs to differ -- creating ahighly interactive site chronicling an international Pacific Ocean jaunt for leatherback turtles.
The 11 turtles racing have been equipped with satellite tags and are headed toward the International Dateline (or the middle of the Pacific Ocean) from nesting beaches in Indonesia and feeding areas along the U.S. West Coast. The race, which begins today and runs until June 16, covers more than 3,000 miles.
The leatherback is a sea turtle that's been around for 100 million years -- they have outlived the dinosaurs but now are dangerously close to extinction, said Mike Milne, Leatherback Campaign Coordinator for the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, one of the race's sponsors.
Numbers in the Pacific Ocean have decreased from about 115,000 two decades ago to fewer than 5,000 today. The Web site chronicling the race aims to raise funds for protecting leatherback turtle-nesting areas in Indonesia, organizers said.
"The decline of leatherbacks in the Pacific is an international problem that calls for an international solution, so our Great Turtle Race efforts to raise the international profile of this species are an important step," Milne said.
Dubbed the Great Turtle Race II, organizers include The Leatherback Trust, NOAA, Global Cause, Tagging of Pacific Pelagics, Sea Turtle Restoration Project, and Drexel University. Eleven institutions and sponsors from America, China and Indonesia are sponsoring the turtles.
As the leatherbacks surface to breath every several minutes, satellite tags transmit data such as location and water temperature to satellites in space, which then transmit the data back down to computer servers in the U.S.
"This data is combined with remotely sensed information about sea surface temperature, sea surface height, and more to build a comprehensive understanding of leatherbacks’ epic, trans-Pacific migrations," Milne said. "Scientists and managers will be able to use this information on oceanography, animal behaviors and human pressures to develop innovative ways to conserve leatherbacks and other sea turtles."
-- Francisco Vara-Orta
Photo: Scott Benson/U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service
6:08 PM, April 29, 2008
Photo submitted by Marek at Your Scene, where readers can share photos and videos of their animals.
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