May 15, 2021 By Erin Blakemore The Washington Post
A study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B explains where at least some sea turtles head after hatching: the Sargasso Sea.
July 15, 2020 By Sarah Keartes Hakai Magazine
Migrating sea turtles carry entire worlds on their backs—ones teeming with life forms small enough to fit between grains of sand. Life on such a scale is easy to overlook, but these miniature communities hold clues that could help protect the living islands they call home.
June 15, 2020 By Corryn Wetzel National Geographic
Loggerhead sea turtles migrate thousands of miles through the world’s oceans, but they don’t travel solo—research shows they carry surprisingly diverse and abundant populations of tiny creatures on their shells. A new paper published May 20 in the journal Diversity shows that loggerhead sea turtles carry an average of 34,000 individual meiofauna—tiny organisms smaller than one millimeter—on their backs. One loggerhead carried nearly 150,000 individual animals on its shell, including nematodes, crustacean larvae, and shrimp.
May 22, 2020 By Elizabeth Claire Alberts Mongabay
In 2018, something extraordinary happened in Phuket, Thailand. For the first time in five years, a leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) crept onto a local beach, dug a nest in the sand, and laid 118 tiny white eggs. Not long after that, two more nests appeared.
April 24, 2020 By Katherine J. Wu Smithsonian Magazine
Beaches in Florida and Thailand have tentatively reported increases in nests, due to decreased human presence. But the trend won’t necessarily persist.