WuNC Sea Grant 



Y.1JS 



May, 1981 



coast Swatch 



JUL « *• 



Photo by Mark Jovner 



Up close and personal with a loggerhead turtle 



Vagabond sea turtles leave scientists mystified 



Sea wanderers. From the time they 

 heave themselves from their sandy 

 nests and flap their way to the surf, sea 

 turtles belong to the ocean. They 

 sometimes swim thousands of miles a 

 year. 



Much of the sea turtle's life remains 

 a mystery, even to those who have 

 spent years studying the marine rep- 

 tiles. The sea turtle's life, which can 

 last 100 years, often surpasses that of 



its human researchers. 



And, the sea turtle is a hard creature 

 to track. Once the newly hatched male 

 leaves his nest on the beach he will 

 never again set a flipper on land. The 

 female will visit land after she reaches 

 sexual maturity to lay her eggs. 



Tagging the reptiles to follow their 

 movement has presented special 

 problems for scientists. Tracing a 

 loggerhead's movements by satellite 



was successful in one study, but such 

 techniques are too expensive to apply 

 extensively. Placing metal tags in the 

 female's leathery flippers as they nest 

 is one method of tagging that has 

 proved only fair at best. The turtles of- 

 ten lose the tags. Also, scientists can 

 only tag the females. But using this 

 method, researchers have found that 



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