First green sea turtles hatched in Delaware - Nest moved twice; next stop is North Carolina (Via Herp Digest)

Written by, MOLLY MURRAY, The News Journal, 12/6/11- LEWES - Having survived two tropical storms and a cold snap, three baby sea turtles made history late Sunday when they hatched from their nomadic nests in Lewes.

The green turtle hatchlings are from the first documented sea turtle nest in Delaware. The species is common in tropical waters, such as those off the coast of Florida and the Caribbean, but is extremely rare this far north.

As early as this morning, the young hatchlings and the remaining eggs will begin the next leg of their journey. They will be driven to North Carolina for eventual release into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, said Suzanne Thurman, executive director of the MERR Institute, Delaware's marine rescue organization.

Sand was stirring in the three nest bins on Monday, a sign that more may hatch. The successful hatching was the result of a monumental effort for eggs at the outer limits of viability.
"I did not give up hope for one second," Thurman said. "This is just such a hopeful story. I could not be one bit happier."

Too often, MERR marine animal rescues begin with a tragedy: a dead whale, sick seals or the remains of a sea turtle

This epic began in mid-August, when a female green turtle made her way onto the beach at Herring Point, dug a kidney-shaped hole in the sand and laid 194 ivory-colored eggs, each bigger than a ping pong ball. At dawn, she made her way back to the ocean.

Green sea turtles reach a maximum size of about 4 feet and a weight of 440 pounds, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They are believed to reach sexual maturity between 20 and 50 years of age.

It is believed to be the first recorded sea turtle nesting in Delaware, Thurman said. Initially, they thought the turtle was a loggerhead but realized after reviewing photographs that it was a green turtle.
The nest was discovered by Cape Henlopen Park Ranger Curtis Reynolds as he was doing a routine patrol along the beach at Herring Point early one morning.

For the next several hours, Betts kept people away from the turtle.

"I've seen lots of dead turtles and rescues," he said. "But this was the first I've ever seen laying eggs."
Early morning surfers and other folks were beginning to show up just as she began moving back toward the ocean, he said.

The nest was marked with white PVC pipe and yellow caution tape.

Thurman got in contact with officials from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

The eggs had been deposited in the high tide zone, an area vulnerable to damage from surf and waves. It took special permission to move the nest.

At the time, Thurman said: "The reality is ... there are a lot of obstacles."
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Northeast Endangered Species officials authorized the movement of the eggs.
The next obstacle came with Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee. Both storms deposited sand on top of the sea turtle nest, and volunteers had to remove the sand by hand.

Then in October, a cold snap hit the area. Typically, temperatures below 78 degrees interrupt incubation of the eggs, said Edna Stetzer, a biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

Stetzer got a temperature monitor from a colleague in North Carolina, placed it in the sand recently and took a reading of 66 degrees.

"It was well below what optimum was," she said.

So state officials worked with the MERR Institute, Delaware's marine mammal stranding organization, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and University of Delaware scientists to move the nest a second time, to a climate-controlled lab at UD's College of Earth, Ocean and Environment in Lewes.

Typically, it takes about 60 days for sea turtle eggs to hatch. Based on the day the eggs were laid, that would have been about Oct. 18.

It's been weeks since the due date, but there are lots of factors at play, including the lunar cycle. "We want to simulate, as much as possible, the natural environment," said Rob Rector, a spokesman for MERR.

Thurman said they are awaiting permits to move the hatchlings and the eggs to the Pine Knoll State Aquarium in North Carolina. There, a scientist familiar with sea turtles will assess their condition and determine whether they are healthy enough to be released, Thurman said.

The idea is they won't expend energy trying to swim to the warmer ocean waters, she said.
Thurman said the hatchlings, which haven't yet grown into their oversized flippers, are "just beautiful."

Satellite tracking of sea turtles reveals potential threat posed by manmade chemicals (Via HerpDigest)

Satellite tracking of sea turtles reveals potential threat posed by manmade chemicals
Phys.org.com , April 20, 2011

The first research to actively analyze adult male sea turtles (Caretta caretta) using satellite tracking to link geography with pollutants has revealed the potential risks posed to this threatened species by manmade chemicals. The research, published today in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, examines the different levels of chemicals in the blood of both migratory and residential turtles.
"The risks posed by persistent organic pollutants (POPs) remain largely a mystery for threatened loggerhead sea turtles," said lead author Jared Ragland from the College of Charleston, South Carolina. "A clear understanding of these risks is critical for wildlife managers trying to maintain both the health of reproductively active individuals and a sustainable population overall."

Twenty-nine turtles were captured near Port Canaveral, Florida and fitted with satellite transmitters as part of a National Marine Fisheries Service-funded project. Blood was analyzed for traces of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and toxaphenes, chemicals documented to have carcinogenic and neurodevelopmental effects.
Of the 29 turtles tracked, 19 were analyzed for POPs for which they were separated into two groups and tracked for 60 days. Ten transient turtles travelled north along the U.S. Atlantic coast, eventually arriving in shelf water between New Jersey and South Carolina, while nine turtles remained resident at Cape Canaveral.

The tracking data revealed significantly different movement patterns between transient and resident adult males. Individuals migrating north after breeding season were found to have elevated blood plasma concentrations of POPs, putting them at higher risk to toxic effects compared to the turtles that remained in Florida.

The findings support the idea that foraging location can influence exposure to, and patterns of, POPs in highly mobile species such as sea turtles. Migrating turtles face cumulative poisoning as contaminants infiltrate the food chain through prey species, such as crabs.

"Our research is the first to examine POPs in the rarely studied adult male sea turtle and to couple contaminant measurements with satellite tracking," concluded Ragland. "Although the turtle has been listed as threatened for more than 30 years, it is only now that we can begin to examine the effects of manmade chemicals on these animals in the wild."

Leatherback Sea Turtle Nests Increasing in Florida (Via HerpDigest)

ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2011) - The number of endangered leatherback sea turtle nests at 68 beaches in Florida has increased by 10.2 percent a year since 1979, according to a new Duke University-led study published in the current issue of the journal Ecological Applications.

Some beaches posted annual increases of more than 16 percent, others as low as 3.1 percent.
The population boom of turtle nests in the Sunshine State mirrors trends observed for other Atlantic leatherback sea turtle populations and is "very encouraging news," says Larry B. Crowder, director of the Duke Center for Marine Conservation. "It suggests that conservation and recovery efforts mandated under the Endangered Species Act are paying off region-wide."

The growth has likely been fueled in part by improved monitoring and protection of nesting beaches over the last 30 years, Crowder says, but other less benign factors may also be at work.
"Nesting is increasing even where beach protection has not been enhanced," he says. "Changing ocean conditions linked to climate variability may be altering the marine food web and creating an environment that favors turtles by reducing the number of predators and increasing the abundance of prey, particularly jellyfish."

With plenty of jellyfish to munch on, breeding-age female leatherbacks may be able to build up fat reserves more quickly, allowing them to nest more frequently, says Kelly Stewart, lead author of the study. Stewart received her Ph.D. from Duke in 2007 and conducted the research on Florida's leatherback sea turtles as her dissertation research. Crowder was her faculty adviser.

Reduced populations of large predators, including the collapse of shark populations in the northwest Atlantic over the past decade, may be playing an even larger role in the turtle boom by decreasing at-sea mortality rates for juvenile and young adult turtles, she says.

Despite being a small population -- scientists estimate fewer than 1,000 leatherbacks nest on Florida beaches -- the increases in nest counts there may help achieve objectives of the federal Endangered Species Act-mandated recovery plan, Stewart says.

News for leatherback populations elsewhere is not so encouraging, however. Populations have plummeted at eastern Pacific nesting beaches in Mexico and Costa Rica, which once hosted thousands of female leatherbacks each year. Extirpation, or local extinction of the species, may be imminent on those beaches.

"The good news here is that while most sea turtles continue to decline, some sea turtles are increasing. We need to understand why they are increasing as much as why they are declining so we can transfer this understanding to other at-risk species, like Pacific leatherbacks," says Crowder.

Stewart, Crowder and their colleagues modeled the 30-year nest counts on Florida beaches using a type of multilevel statistical analysis called Poisson regression, which is frequently used to model counts affected by multiple, often random, factors.

Nest counts are the most reliable way of assessing trends in sea turtle populations because they spend most of their lives in the open ocean, where changes in abundance are difficult to detect.

Stewart is now based at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in LaJolla, Calif., as a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow. Prior to that, she served as a postdoctoral research associate at the Duke Center for Marine Conservation.
Other co-authors of the study are Michelle Sims of the University of Bath, U.K., and Anne Meylan, Blair Witherington and Beth Brost, all of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Epic Journeys of Turtles Revealed - Leatherbacks in the Atlantic

(PhysOrg.com) --1/15/11 The epic ocean-spanning journeys of the gigantic leatherback turtle in the South Atlantic have been revealed for the first time thanks to groundbreaking research using satellite tracking.

Experts at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation (Cornwall) at the University of Exeter led a five-year study to find out more about these increasingly rare creatures and inform conservation efforts.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B today, has shed new light on the little-known migration behaviour of these animals following their movement from the world's largest breeding colony in Gabon, Central Africa, as they returned to feeding grounds across the South Atlantic.

The research has been carried out with the help of Parcs Gabon, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), PTMG (Marine Turtle Partnership for Gabon), the Trans-Atlantic Leatherback Conservation Initiative (TALCIN) - a multi-partner effort coordinated by WWF, and SEATURTLE.org.

Out of 25 females studied in the new research, three migratory routes were identified including one 7,563km (4,699 mile) journey straight across the South Atlantic from Africa to South America.

Other routes still involved large distances, as they moved from Gabon to food-rich habitats in the southwest and southeast Atlantic and off the coast of Central Africa. They will stay in these areas for 2-5 years to build up the reserves to reproduce, when they will return to Gabon once again.

Dr Matthew Witt said: "Despite extensive research carried out on leatherbacks, no-one has really been sure about the journeys they take in the South Atlantic until now. What we've shown is that there are three clear migration routes as they head back to feeding grounds after breeding in Gabon, although the numbers adopting each strategy varied each year. We don't know what influences that choice yet, but we do know these are truly remarkable journeys – with one female tracked for thousands of miles travelling in a straight line right across the Atlantic."

In the Pacific ocean, leatherback turtles have seen a precipitous decline over the past three decades – with one nesting colony in Mexico declining from 70,000 in 1982 to just 250 by 1998-9*. The exact cause of the dramatic fall-off in numbers is not clear, but turtle egg harvesting, coastal gillnet fishing, and longline fishing have been identified as potential factors.

Epic Journeys of Turtles Revealed - Leatherbacks in the Atlantic

(PhysOrg.com) --1/15/11 The epic ocean-spanning journeys of the gigantic leatherback turtle in the South Atlantic have been revealed for the first time thanks to groundbreaking research using satellite tracking.

Experts at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation (Cornwall) at the University of Exeter led a five-year study to find out more about these increasingly rare creatures and inform conservation efforts.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B today, has shed new light on the little-known migration behaviour of these animals following their movement from the world's largest breeding colony in Gabon, Central Africa, as they returned to feeding grounds across the South Atlantic.

The research has been carried out with the help of Parcs Gabon, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), PTMG (Marine Turtle Partnership for Gabon), the Trans-Atlantic Leatherback Conservation Initiative (TALCIN) - a multi-partner effort coordinated by WWF, and SEATURTLE.org.

Out of 25 females studied in the new research, three migratory routes were identified including one 7,563km (4,699 mile) journey straight across the South Atlantic from Africa to South America.

Other routes still involved large distances, as they moved from Gabon to food-rich habitats in the southwest and southeast Atlantic and off the coast of Central Africa. They will stay in these areas for 2-5 years to build up the reserves to reproduce, when they will return to Gabon once again.

Dr Matthew Witt said: "Despite extensive research carried out on leatherbacks, no-one has really been sure about the journeys they take in the South Atlantic until now. What we've shown is that there are three clear migration routes as they head back to feeding grounds after breeding in Gabon, although the numbers adopting each strategy varied each year. We don't know what influences that choice yet, but we do know these are truly remarkable journeys – with one female tracked for thousands of miles travelling in a straight line right across the Atlantic."

In the Pacific ocean, leatherback turtles have seen a precipitous decline over the past three decades – with one nesting colony in Mexico declining from 70,000 in 1982 to just 250 by 1998-9*. The exact cause of the dramatic fall-off in numbers is not clear, but turtle egg harvesting, coastal gillnet fishing, and longline fishing have been identified as potential factors.

Atlantic Sea Turtle Population Threatened by Egg Infection

ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2010) — An international team of mycologists and ecologists studying Atlantic sea turtles at Cape Verde have discovered that the species is under threat from a fungal infection which targets eggs. The research, published in FEMS Microbiology Letters, reveals how the fungus Fusarium solani may have played a key role in the 30-year decline in turtle numbers.


"In the past 30 years we have witnessed an abrupt decline in the number of nesting beaches of sea turtles worldwide," said Drs. Javier Diéguez-Uribeondo and Adolfo Marco from Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas- CSIC Spain. "While many of the reasons for this are related to the human impact of the costal environment it has been suspected that the decline is also due to pathogenic microorganisms."


Fusarium solani is a complex fungal strain which represents over 45 phylogenetic and biological species. The fungus is distributed through soil and can cause serious plant diseases. The fungus is known to have infected at least 111 plant species spanning 87 genera and has also been shown to cause disease in other animals with immunodeficiency.

During embryonic development turtle eggs spend long periods covered by sand under conditions of high humidity and warm temperatures, which are known to favor the growth of soil-born fungi.

Dr Diéguez-Uribeondo's team focused their study on the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) population on Boavista Island, Cape Verde, off the West African coast. While Boavista Island represents one of the most important nesting regions for this species a high hatching failure rate is driving population numbers down.

The team sampled egg shells with early and severe symptoms of infection, as well as diseased embryos from sea turtle nests located in Ervatao, Joao Barrosa and Curral Velho beaches and discovered 25 isolates of F. solani associated with egg mass mortalities.

Although this fungal species has been previously described in association with different infections in animals, its relationship to hatching failure had not been investigated before this study.

The finding that strains of F. solani may act as a primary pathogen in loggerhead sea turtles represents an extremely high risk to the conservation of loggerhead sea turtles across the area.

However, the description of these particular fungal strains causing this infection may help in developing conservation programs based on artificial incubation and may aid the development of preventative methods in the field to reduce or totally erase the presence of F. solani in turtle nests.

"This work reveals that a strain of F. solani is responsible for the symptoms observed on turtle nesting beaches," concluded Dr Diéguez-Uribeondo. "This shows that the infection represents a serious risk for the survival of this endangered species, while also showing immunologists and conservationists where to focus their research."



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101029104610.htm

Atlantic Sea Turtle Population Threatened by Egg Infection

ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2010) — An international team of mycologists and ecologists studying Atlantic sea turtles at Cape Verde have discovered that the species is under threat from a fungal infection which targets eggs. The research, published in FEMS Microbiology Letters, reveals how the fungus Fusarium solani may have played a key role in the 30-year decline in turtle numbers.


"In the past 30 years we have witnessed an abrupt decline in the number of nesting beaches of sea turtles worldwide," said Drs. Javier Diéguez-Uribeondo and Adolfo Marco from Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas- CSIC Spain. "While many of the reasons for this are related to the human impact of the costal environment it has been suspected that the decline is also due to pathogenic microorganisms."


Fusarium solani is a complex fungal strain which represents over 45 phylogenetic and biological species. The fungus is distributed through soil and can cause serious plant diseases. The fungus is known to have infected at least 111 plant species spanning 87 genera and has also been shown to cause disease in other animals with immunodeficiency.

During embryonic development turtle eggs spend long periods covered by sand under conditions of high humidity and warm temperatures, which are known to favor the growth of soil-born fungi.

Dr Diéguez-Uribeondo's team focused their study on the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) population on Boavista Island, Cape Verde, off the West African coast. While Boavista Island represents one of the most important nesting regions for this species a high hatching failure rate is driving population numbers down.

The team sampled egg shells with early and severe symptoms of infection, as well as diseased embryos from sea turtle nests located in Ervatao, Joao Barrosa and Curral Velho beaches and discovered 25 isolates of F. solani associated with egg mass mortalities.

Although this fungal species has been previously described in association with different infections in animals, its relationship to hatching failure had not been investigated before this study.

The finding that strains of F. solani may act as a primary pathogen in loggerhead sea turtles represents an extremely high risk to the conservation of loggerhead sea turtles across the area.

However, the description of these particular fungal strains causing this infection may help in developing conservation programs based on artificial incubation and may aid the development of preventative methods in the field to reduce or totally erase the presence of F. solani in turtle nests.

"This work reveals that a strain of F. solani is responsible for the symptoms observed on turtle nesting beaches," concluded Dr Diéguez-Uribeondo. "This shows that the infection represents a serious risk for the survival of this endangered species, while also showing immunologists and conservationists where to focus their research."



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101029104610.htm