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Among the 12 Leatherbacks that were tagged, there was one female, the longest of the lot at 1.6m called Talulah. She is named, incidentally, after the unfortunate child in New Zealand who recently sued her parents for naming her 'Talulah Does the Hula from Hawaii'. She was tagged on July 29, 2008 in Vineyard Sound and Kara has been following her ever since. As you can see on our migration map, Talulah has made good progress, possibly on her way to a nesting beach in the Caribbean: she has travelled over 3000 km and is currently due west of Bermuda.
Leatherback Turtles are another of the mysterious oceanic migrants. Leatherbacks are unique in that they are warm-bodied - they can keep their body temperatures high unlike other marine turtles. This allows them to dive to deeper depths and to roam in colder, more northerly waters. This makes it harder for us to follow them so, like the Whale Shark, very little is known about their migration routes.
However, by tagging these 12 turtles, the LPRC are hoping that they can answer some questions about the turtles that forage off the coast of New England: where are they coming from, where do they over-winter, do they return to forage off New England every year, what features of the ocean do they use to navigate by and what are the cues for their migration?
The 12 Leatherbacks have been on migration for 4 months now and Kara already has some surprising results. Talulah was one of 4 turtles that started their migration by following the continental shelf but one individual went straight out into open water, has already passed the mid Atlantic ridge and is half way to Africa. No foraging turtle from the western Atlantic has ever been recorded journeying to Africa so it will be interesting to see what happens to this individual.
Another surprise has been the sustained swim speeds exhibited by these turtles: their average speed is 40-50 km a day but some of these turtles have been hitting speeds of 80-100 km a day. Kara went on to tell us that there is such a variety of results from each turtle, and this is something that really intrigues us at WOTM. Does each turtle have its own specific "roadmap"?
We'll be keeping in contact with Kara to see how significant these finds are. We will also be updating Talulah's migration map on a regular basis so you can see if she is indeed heading for a nesting beach in the Caribbean.
Photos by Kara Dodge and Nuno Fraguso from the Large Pelagics Research Centre and Connie Merigo from New England Aquarium. LPRC retain the copyright to all photographs, which were taken under the Endangered Species Permit #1557.
Further Reading:
Last report: Leatherback Turtles - Part 4
Large Pelagics Research Centre's Leatherback Turtle Program
Follow Talulah on our migration map