Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we've got a really great interview to share with
Speaker 1: you today. This is with Dr Christine Bigener. Uh so
Speaker 1: as a way of introduction. Dr Christine Figner is a
Speaker 1: marine conservation biologist and science communicator who has been really
Speaker 1: successful on social media. Sometimes known as the Sea Turtle
Speaker 1: straw Lady, she has raised global awareness of the issue
Speaker 1: of ocean plastic pollution and has been studying sea turtles
Speaker 1: for over fifteen years. You might have seen her in
Speaker 1: a viral video moment where she was she and her
Speaker 1: research team were removing a plastic straw that was lodged
Speaker 1: in a sea turtles nose, and of course that video
Speaker 1: triggered a lot of thought about what is what is
Speaker 1: the effect to say single use plastics such as plastic
Speaker 1: straws in on marine life. Christine today is a is
Speaker 1: a science communicator who uh speaks at events about her
Speaker 1: sea turtle conservation work, fighting plastic pollution, and empowering women
Speaker 1: in science. In eighteen, Time magazine honored her outreach and
Speaker 1: advocacy efforts by naming her a Next Generation Leader. As
Speaker 1: Director of Science and Education for the US based Footprint Foundation,
Speaker 1: she travels the globe educating people about the effects of
Speaker 1: plastic pollution on our environment and human health, and inspiring
Speaker 1: people to reduce their use of plastic. She's also the
Speaker 1: co founder and scientific lead of a community centered, grassroots
Speaker 1: conservation organization in Costa Rica that is researching and protecting
Speaker 1: sea turtles. Christine's overall goal is to reach as many
Speaker 1: people as possible with her message to eliminate plastic from
Speaker 1: our environment, save sea turtles from extinction, empower women in science,
Speaker 1: and make our planets safer and healthier for wildlife and
Speaker 1: people alike. So that's just a really fun at Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and dive into it. Let's get into some
Speaker 1: gnarly facts and stories about sea turtles. We have all
Speaker 1: sea turtle questions for you here today. We may ask
Speaker 1: you whale stuff too, because you were You were also
Speaker 1: originally interested in cetations, right, Yeah, somebody did the homework
Speaker 1: on me. Yeah, I became a marine biologist because I
Speaker 1: love humpback whales. Oh did you happen to read the
Speaker 1: story of supposedly a man off the coast province town
Speaker 1: who was a lobster diver reported that he was temporarily
Speaker 1: swallowed by a humpback whale. Do you believe it's true?
Speaker 1: Creepy and funny? Is that allegedly it's the same guy
Speaker 1: that like a few years ago, survived airplane crash in
Speaker 1: Costa Rica, one of the few survivors wow about having
Speaker 1: more than one life. Yeah? Well wait, so do you
Speaker 1: have any reason to be skeptical of the story or
Speaker 1: do you think it's plausible that he did go into
Speaker 1: the humpback whales mouth and then was spit out. I
Speaker 1: think that's possible. I don't think it was swallowed. I
Speaker 1: just think, I mean, not swallowed all the way right,
Speaker 1: So I think probably. I mean, if you've ever seen him,
Speaker 1: big whales feeding, right, so they kind of have those
Speaker 1: bubble curtains and then they just go in and just
Speaker 1: open their mouths wide just to like, you know, swallow
Speaker 1: the largest quantity possible and if you happen to just
Speaker 1: be there. But I'm sure that way I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what's that in my mouth? Is just
Speaker 1: like wrong place, wrong time? Huh. Well, we just we
Speaker 1: just jumped right into it. Maybe we should back up
Speaker 1: and uh and actually get officially started. Um, so one
Speaker 1: place we do like to start here is Christine. Can
Speaker 1: you just introduce yourself to the audience, stating your name,
Speaker 1: your title, as well as any key affiliations or employers
Speaker 1: organizations that you want right up there at the top
Speaker 1: with your ID. Yeah, my name is Christine Siginger. I
Speaker 1: am I Trade the marine biologist, and I have been
Speaker 1: working on the interface between conservation and applied signs for
Speaker 1: about more than fifteen years now, mainly with sea turtles,
Speaker 1: but also with cetaceans and wells and dolphins. And right
Speaker 1: now I am running a small community based grassroots organization
Speaker 1: in Constrica that is protecting sea turtles. And I'm also
Speaker 1: the director of science and Education for the US based
Speaker 1: Footprint Foundation, which is we're trying to convince people to
Speaker 1: reduce their use of plastics. So that's pretty much me
Speaker 1: and I'm nutshell. I guess, so you mentioned that you
Speaker 1: were originally interested in cetations before you got into sea
Speaker 1: turtles as a research area. How did you How did
Speaker 1: you make that leap? And I guess you can back
Speaker 1: all the way up to setations if you want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I in my teens. You know, we're usually
Speaker 1: people are obsessing about boy bands. I guess I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say which one was popular during my times
Speaker 1: because that would review my age, I guess um. But
Speaker 1: instead of that, I was actually collecting you know, posters
Speaker 1: and articles and other stuff about whales and dolphins, and
Speaker 1: I put particularly loved hum big whales. So I I
Speaker 1: play music. I played the guitar, and I sing, and
Speaker 1: I always thought, you know, it would be so cool
Speaker 1: to study the songs of hump big whales. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a cultural thing and it would have
Speaker 1: combined a lot of my interests into like this one thing.
Speaker 1: But then I happened to have the chance to go
Speaker 1: to Costrica on a sea turtle or into a seaturtal
Speaker 1: project when I did my master's into a leather bag project,
Speaker 1: very specific, and I totally fell in love with that
Speaker 1: type of work because it's super hands on. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's that many, you know, jobs as a wildlife
Speaker 1: biologist where you can be with such a large animal,
Speaker 1: you know, for extended times in the natural environment without
Speaker 1: having to you know, tranquilize them or restrain them even
Speaker 1: in any shape or form, and it was so impressive,
Speaker 1: just like the environment. Right, So you're on these tropical beaches,
Speaker 1: have this incredible you know, biodiversity all around you. You
Speaker 1: have the jungle right next to you on one side,
Speaker 1: and you have you know, the vast ocean on the other.
Speaker 1: You have this incredible night sky over your head. And
Speaker 1: then you just you know, walk, you know, kilometers and
Speaker 1: hours without end on the beach just to find this
Speaker 1: like one track that leads up to the verm, up
Speaker 1: to the vegetation, and you hope that the turtle is
Speaker 1: still there. And then once you see the turtle, it's
Speaker 1: just you know, they're real life dinosaurs if you think
Speaker 1: about it, right, they have been around for hundred on
Speaker 1: a hundreds, but definitely more than a hundred million years,
Speaker 1: especially leather bags, which are like the oldest lineage of
Speaker 1: sea turtles that we still have. And when you just
Speaker 1: sit next to them, they're massive. I mean, they're absolutely gigdentists.
Speaker 1: And you can see them, you know, using their real
Speaker 1: floppers just like hands, digging their ex chamberers, squeezing out
Speaker 1: the eggs, creating a new generation. And yeah, I totally
Speaker 1: I was totally aw and I just Okay, this is
Speaker 1: like the coolest thing I've ever done in my life,
Speaker 1: and that is just how I fell in love and
Speaker 1: just stayed with it. Wow. You know, speaking of just
Speaker 1: how long sea turtles have been around, Um, well, what
Speaker 1: is it about the sea turtle that has enabled it
Speaker 1: to survive while so many other marine reptiles have gone extinct?
Speaker 1: Like what is what do you think is the winning
Speaker 1: design of the sea turtle? You know, that's that's a
Speaker 1: really good question, and I don't think we have like
Speaker 1: a definite answer. I think, especially in evolutionary biology, we
Speaker 1: always make very many intelligent guesses. But of course, at
Speaker 1: one point there were a lot more sea turtle species
Speaker 1: than there are nowadays. As so we are down to seven,
Speaker 1: seven extant species. And if you look at the seven
Speaker 1: species right now, it's really interesting because they all have
Speaker 1: similar ecologies to certain degree because you know, you can
Speaker 1: find them in usually warmer waters because the active therm,
Speaker 1: so that means they cannot regulate their own body temperature,
Speaker 1: so that means they have to get an outside source
Speaker 1: to really you know, get their metabolism going. So that
Speaker 1: means you find them in tropical waters subtropical waters and
Speaker 1: they're all coming onto the beach to nest. But then
Speaker 1: if you look at that diet, and I think that
Speaker 1: is really the key is you know, how they diversified.
Speaker 1: It's really over the over the axis of the diet.
Speaker 1: So we have very specialized species such as the hawks
Speaker 1: bill or the leather bags. Of the hawks bill feeds
Speaker 1: mainly on sponges, the leather bag feeds mainly on jellyfish.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's another really cool thing if you think
Speaker 1: about how large that animal is that feeds on an
Speaker 1: animal that's just barely you know, anything other than water. Um.
Speaker 1: Then we have green turtles that are as adults at
Speaker 1: least mainly herbivorous, so they're very different in their you know,
Speaker 1: trophic niche as we would say scientists. So that means,
Speaker 1: you know, they have very different diet and that is
Speaker 1: probably the the secret to their you know, coexistence, that
Speaker 1: they're not competing with each other for resources. And the
Speaker 1: other thing is sea turtles are incredible resilience. So I've
Speaker 1: never met um animals that are so resilient. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've seen so many turtles that have suffered incredible injuries literally,
Speaker 1: you know, amputations, of limbs or really crazy damage to
Speaker 1: their to their shell, and they're still able to survive
Speaker 1: and not just survive, but you know, still kind of
Speaker 1: go with their biological program go and mates come up
Speaker 1: to the beach and lay their eggs, even though they
Speaker 1: might have literally no real flippers anymore, or massive slashes
Speaker 1: in their carapace. I mean, I've seen really really sad things,
Speaker 1: but it also makes me think, wow, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're really resilient, so that means things might not face
Speaker 1: you as much as others. And they're also pretty widespread, right,
Speaker 1: so that means we have really sea turtles and almost
Speaker 1: all tropical waters. So um, even if maybe one population
Speaker 1: might go extinct, they are probably able to repopulate, you know,
Speaker 1: into in from that population into other areas again. And
Speaker 1: that might have been you know, the secret of why
Speaker 1: they were able to survive so long, because they were
Speaker 1: probably able to first of all, migrate into into other
Speaker 1: places if if things became inhabitable or were able to
Speaker 1: you know, diversify that diet over the course of millions
Speaker 1: of years. And it seems also be the body plan
Speaker 1: that they have seems to be really successful. Right, So
Speaker 1: I don't know if everybody knows that. But turtles, not
Speaker 1: just sea turtles, Um. Their shell is actually made from
Speaker 1: their rip cache that merged together. So the single rips
Speaker 1: it's kind of you know, became bony and just like yeah,
Speaker 1: became the shell. So the shell is actually the vertebrate,
Speaker 1: and the rips and everything else like your shoulder blades
Speaker 1: and everything moved inside. So they have created this incredible armor.
Speaker 1: I mean, in German, if you translate like turtle, it
Speaker 1: actually means shielded toad because the habits like shield and protected,
Speaker 1: right um. And that means of course that once sea
Speaker 1: turtles have read to certain buddy size, there's not that
Speaker 1: many natural predators that are actually able to eat a turtle,
Speaker 1: right So right now, I mean we're taking like humans
Speaker 1: aside at this point, but if you're talking about natural predators,
Speaker 1: it's really only about you know, the the animals really
Speaker 1: strong mandibles that can crack that shell. So that's the
Speaker 1: tiger shark, is the j jack wires, and it's crocodiles
Speaker 1: that might be able to really eat an entire turtle.
Speaker 1: I mean they might be able otherwise to take like
Speaker 1: a bite out of flipper, but that's not the delicious
Speaker 1: pipe with all the fat and all the all the meat,
Speaker 1: it's all inside of the shell, right, So correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, But I believe there's still some mystery
Speaker 1: about the sort of step wise evolutionary process that led
Speaker 1: to the turtle having a shell? Isn't there? Because I
Speaker 1: think I was reading that, Um, it's sort of hypothesized
Speaker 1: that maybe a middle stage was first you had some
Speaker 1: kind of lizard like creature that had a wide, large
Speaker 1: rib cage, and then maybe in between it had a
Speaker 1: body plan that was sort of like you would see
Speaker 1: with models of the ankleosaurus, where they're sort of plates
Speaker 1: all over the back, and then over time those plates fused.
Speaker 1: Is that sort of in the right direction? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean I'm not an expert on like, you know, the
Speaker 1: paleontology I think, or like the actual um evolution of
Speaker 1: of like the body plant. But what's interesting if you
Speaker 1: just look back, for example, even just look at the
Speaker 1: leather back So we have seven species, as I said,
Speaker 1: and six of them all belong to the height shell turtles. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of the same group. And then we
Speaker 1: have the leather back turtles, which are their own lineage,
Speaker 1: and leather bags actually look a lot more like the
Speaker 1: you know, the the older lineages as well, because they
Speaker 1: have a reduced care place. So leather bags are pretty
Speaker 1: much named because they have a soft shell, so they
Speaker 1: do not have those bony plates. Um. If you look
Speaker 1: at it at a skeleton of the leather bag, you
Speaker 1: will not exactly see what I just said where the
Speaker 1: grips have grown together, so it's it's more like cartilage
Speaker 1: um um. And parts of it is it's just like
Speaker 1: a reduced shell. And our colon for example, which is
Speaker 1: one of the you know, first seat riddles that that
Speaker 1: we've known of from the fossil finds, looks a lot
Speaker 1: like leather bags, so they have you know, they have
Speaker 1: some type of shell, but it's more a reduced shell.
Speaker 1: And also I think and other fossil finds, you can
Speaker 1: see that certain sea turtles, for example, had a like
Speaker 1: a stronger plastron which is like the belly part of
Speaker 1: the shell victually as you know, um like kind of
Speaker 1: a reinforced carapace which is the upper part of the shell,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. So it might have been like different
Speaker 1: pressures for example, of where your natural predators came from.
Speaker 1: So if you were mainly you know, attacked from the bottom.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was you know, advantageous to have you know,
Speaker 1: a kind of reinforced shield on your belly rather than
Speaker 1: on your back or vice versa. So you don't know.
Speaker 1: But that's, like I said, that's the intelligent guesses that
Speaker 1: you have may have to make about evolution and why
Speaker 1: certain things developed or weren't successful in the end. Excellent.
Speaker 1: So I'm not going to ask basically three questions at
Speaker 1: the same time, but they're very they're very simple and sudden.
Speaker 1: They are kind to flow together. So how many of
Speaker 1: the seven extant sea turtle species have you observed in
Speaker 1: the wild, which ones do you work with the most,
Speaker 1: and do you have a favorite? So from the seven
Speaker 1: I have seen in the wild six and missing the
Speaker 1: flat fact turtle. So we have two species which are
Speaker 1: considered endemic, which means they're only found in a very specific,
Speaker 1: very limited geo geographic range, which is first of all,
Speaker 1: the chempstradilely turtle, which can be mainly found or solely
Speaker 1: found in the Gulf of Mexico. And then there's the
Speaker 1: flat fact turtle, which is pretty much found in the
Speaker 1: waters around northern Australia between Papa Papua New Guinea and
Speaker 1: and in Australia they but they nest mainly on the
Speaker 1: north shore of Australia, so I haven't seen that one yet.
Speaker 1: That is really, um my last one that I'm missing.
Speaker 1: I do work mainly with the species that we have
Speaker 1: in Costrica where I'm based. So the species I started
Speaker 1: with is the leather back turtle, but we're also getting
Speaker 1: you know, a lower number of green turtles nesting in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean as well as on the leather back beaches
Speaker 1: I've worked on in the Pacific. And then for my PhD,
Speaker 1: I really extensively studied olive red lace, which is one
Speaker 1: of the smallest species. And then right now, since last year,
Speaker 1: I just initiated a larger hospital project, which is also
Speaker 1: the same beach where the leather bags are nesting. So
Speaker 1: you've always got some, but now we're really focusing on,
Speaker 1: you know, monitoring the hospital population, which is not nesting
Speaker 1: exactly at the same time than the leather bags. And well,
Speaker 1: my favorite one, hands down leather bags. I mean, I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, and everybody that disagrees with me,
Speaker 1: they're just wrong. Um just because leather bags I just incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean they really they they just constitute so many
Speaker 1: or like they have so many super a littles about them.
Speaker 1: I mean, they are the species that are distributed the widest.
Speaker 1: So we're still talking about an active them animal, right,
Speaker 1: an animal that is in fear not able to regulate
Speaker 1: their body temperature. But you will find or you can't
Speaker 1: find leather blacks in waters that are substantially colder than
Speaker 1: what the perfect temperature would be for them. Right, So
Speaker 1: our populations in Costa Rica, depending which side of the
Speaker 1: coast on they feed either in front of Nova Scotia
Speaker 1: in Canada, Wales, England, also in the North Sea, so
Speaker 1: recently there was actually stranding in Denmark um and then
Speaker 1: the ones that have nesting on the Pacific side they
Speaker 1: are usually going down to Peru, which are also pretty
Speaker 1: cold waters. And how they can do it is, you know,
Speaker 1: they have really found a way of first of all,
Speaker 1: maintaining their body temperature, the core temperature steady. So they
Speaker 1: have this like incredible fatty layers. It's almost like a
Speaker 1: winter coat that keeps them warm and insulated. But then
Speaker 1: of course they don't have it on their flippers, but
Speaker 1: they do have it around the esophagus, so that's really cool, right,
Speaker 1: So that means even when they like swallow their prey,
Speaker 1: which might be colder than their core temperature, it prevents
Speaker 1: their core body temperature from dropping. And then it is
Speaker 1: you know, first, of course it's a large animal, so
Speaker 1: they have a better surface to volume ratio. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's a term, it's called the gun to thermi um.
Speaker 1: You know that it's just like you don't lose as
Speaker 1: much heat over your surface just because you're large. And
Speaker 1: then also because your flippers of course are exposed, they're
Speaker 1: not having this fetty tissue. And in theory, you know,
Speaker 1: all that blood that circulates, the warm blood goes out,
Speaker 1: would cool down, go back, but no, they have this
Speaker 1: countercurrent system where you know, the warm blood that comes
Speaker 1: from the body is actually warming up the cold blood
Speaker 1: that comes back from the flipper without losing the heat. Right,
Speaker 1: So they're pretty much just like pass it on to
Speaker 1: the blood that goes back into the body. And then
Speaker 1: the last thing that is actually a little bit more
Speaker 1: recent is that some scientists just discovered that the bags
Speaker 1: are able to produce a certain amount of body heat
Speaker 1: through digestion, so they made them swallow temperature pills um,
Speaker 1: you know little devices that can literally measure the different
Speaker 1: temperature while they were going through the digestive track, and
Speaker 1: they're like, wow, okay, you're digesting and you're actually producing here.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing. So you know the limitations of what
Speaker 1: we know about active therms and it's pretty it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, other bags are just wow, mind blown. Would
Speaker 1: would that last fact mean that it's not actually such
Speaker 1: a strict dividing line between warm blooded animals and cold
Speaker 1: blooded animals? But more question of degree this is this
Speaker 1: is a good question. Some people have argued that leather
Speaker 1: bags might be not as you know, strictly active therm
Speaker 1: as we would have categorized them. But then, of course
Speaker 1: where do you draw the line? Right? Scientists like to
Speaker 1: have drawers where you can like stuff things into and
Speaker 1: it's just like, okay, you have this, but not that.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes, you know, especially when you think
Speaker 1: about how evolution happens, it's just not that clear and cut.
Speaker 1: So in talking about the leather back, you were mentioning
Speaker 1: that it has a self warming throat. When you look
Speaker 1: inside their mouth, it does really look like a horror show.
Speaker 1: They have these uh, these spikes so what's going on
Speaker 1: with all that? What does what does that tell us
Speaker 1: about the lifestyle of the leather at sea turtle. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you just have to think about, right, you
Speaker 1: are a leather back turtle, You're swimming underwater, and you
Speaker 1: are trying to eat this very deliberate thing, what is
Speaker 1: a jellyfish, But you also don't want to swallow the seawater, right,
Speaker 1: So it's not like you're wanting to eat seawater all
Speaker 1: the time, you know. So you're taking a bite and
Speaker 1: you swallow the jellyfish. You swallow the seawater, but before
Speaker 1: you maybe we shouldn't say swallow, so you kind of
Speaker 1: take it into your mouth, but before you actually swallow it,
Speaker 1: you want to get rid of the sea water. And
Speaker 1: so that means you also do not want to get
Speaker 1: rid of the jellyfish though, But it's so you know,
Speaker 1: sliming glibbery that there's a good chance it would go
Speaker 1: out if it wouldn't be for those spines that a
Speaker 1: cut during the entire mouth down all the way down
Speaker 1: to the aesephagus. Actually, other sea turtle species have those
Speaker 1: spines as well, they're just not so like in the
Speaker 1: mouth cavity already, so it's usually just like the aesephagus
Speaker 1: that is having those um But yeah, and in the
Speaker 1: ladder bag, it's right behind the mandibles. It's where it starts.
Speaker 1: So it looks at one of those alien mouth that
Speaker 1: you know that I think that pretty typical I feel
Speaker 1: in science fiction movies. But it's really about and they're
Speaker 1: all pointing towards the stomach, and that means it's really
Speaker 1: kind of meant to, you know, for the jellyfish to
Speaker 1: get stuck in it, and they are able to extract
Speaker 1: the water, usually through their nostrils, so there's a connection
Speaker 1: between the mouth cavity and the nose um so they
Speaker 1: don't even have to open the mouth and then they
Speaker 1: just collect the jellyfish and then they just swallow it
Speaker 1: without all the seawater. That's amazing. So what does it
Speaker 1: mean to specialize in eating jellyfish? Like, what kind of
Speaker 1: niche is that? Is that the kind of niche where
Speaker 1: you're getting more prey and it's easier to get or
Speaker 1: is it the other way around? What does that mean
Speaker 1: to you? Well, I mean, we don't know of how
Speaker 1: it started right to just see what it is right now,
Speaker 1: But the thing is the sort of leather backs feed
Speaker 1: in areas where there's a high density of of of jellyfish,
Speaker 1: so that means the energy that it takes for them
Speaker 1: to get to those jellyfish is not as large. We're
Speaker 1: not as big, and they're obviously able to still fatten
Speaker 1: up enough to produce their eggs or have enough energy
Speaker 1: to you know, do their large migrations. And it's really
Speaker 1: funny if you ever get a chance to to watch
Speaker 1: some of those videos that were filmed in Nova Score
Speaker 1: in front of Nova s Kotia, it is really you know,
Speaker 1: the leather bag just swimming through the water and just
Speaker 1: like eating one eating another one do like these you know,
Speaker 1: large groups of jellyfish. Um, it's just they have to
Speaker 1: eat a lot, so it's pretty much you know tons
Speaker 1: probably um go on so many parts of their of
Speaker 1: their body weights in order to to to sustain themselves
Speaker 1: and even you know, have more to do all of
Speaker 1: those things that they need to do to reproduce. But
Speaker 1: that is probably one of the reasons they're not nesting
Speaker 1: every year. So females skip usually one or two seasons
Speaker 1: in between so they have enough time to fetten up
Speaker 1: use all the follicles and then make the migration back
Speaker 1: to to the nesting beaches. That that eating behavior kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me if you ever saw the episode of
Speaker 1: The Simpsons where Homer goes to space and the ends
Speaker 1: up eating the potato chips floating in zero G. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is very accurate. Actually, maybe not as crunchy, but
Speaker 1: the um. Yeah. So I guess backing up a little
Speaker 1: bit to just sort of generally about sea turtles, what
Speaker 1: do you think are the biggest public misconceptions about sea turtles.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's as many misconceptions about sea
Speaker 1: turtles this for example, about dolphins, um or sharks. I
Speaker 1: think people like sea turtles because they're cute. What I
Speaker 1: always find very interesting is that people really don't like
Speaker 1: reptiles in general. So, you know, snakes and crocodiles people
Speaker 1: usually associate with evil. They have an evil look. And
Speaker 1: I always have to laugh because sea turtles are also reptiles.
Speaker 1: It's just that they seem to be a little bit cuter,
Speaker 1: or considered a little bit cuter than in other animals. Um.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people don't know much about,
Speaker 1: you know, the ecology of sea turtles. For example, that
Speaker 1: sea turtles have to breathe air, so they're you know,
Speaker 1: having lungs just like us. Um that they're really highly migratory,
Speaker 1: so it's not like they're you know, just hanging out
Speaker 1: in front of the beach and then they're coming back.
Speaker 1: I think there's just a lot of information that is
Speaker 1: not known to the general public. I think that's other
Speaker 1: than misconceptions that I can think of, like out of
Speaker 1: the top of my head. I was in preparation for
Speaker 1: you coming on the show here. I was listening to
Speaker 1: Cara Museums in be with you on So You Want
Speaker 1: to Be a Marine Biologist podcast, which is at Marine
Speaker 1: Bio dot life, and I was fascinated by your descriptions
Speaker 1: of the auto bada. So I was wondering, could you
Speaker 1: tell our listeners what the arabada is and what it's
Speaker 1: like to witness it and study it. Yeah. So, Um,
Speaker 1: from all the secretal species, there's only two species that
Speaker 1: engage in that what we call the adibada behavior. Aribada
Speaker 1: is from the Spanish word for arrival, and it is
Speaker 1: pretty much describing a synchronized mass nesting. So the olive
Speaker 1: redley and the camps retally the two smallest species are
Speaker 1: the ones that do nest in those synchronized mass nestings,
Speaker 1: which usually happened in the case of olive release at
Speaker 1: least about once a month, and then depending if which
Speaker 1: season it is, you have like larger audibadas or smaller
Speaker 1: audi badas. But the really large audibadas can have up
Speaker 1: to half a million females. So you just have to envision. Uh.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's not like it's all happening in one night,
Speaker 1: so it's usually over the course of or to seven days.
Speaker 1: But it's usually even if in Austria. Now in Lost
Speaker 1: kast Rica, which is our largest adivada beach, it's about
Speaker 1: a six kilometer beach, but the synchronized mass nesting only
Speaker 1: happens about less than a kilometer, right, So you have
Speaker 1: to envision once the adivada starts, it is that if
Speaker 1: somebody blows a whistle and all of a sudden, you
Speaker 1: have all these females that had already been gathering right
Speaker 1: in front of the shore. They are all coming up
Speaker 1: together and start their nesting program. Right, It's like a
Speaker 1: little computer chip. It all kind of looks the same.
Speaker 1: So they come up, they start digging, they start laying
Speaker 1: their eggs and start camouflage and they do their little
Speaker 1: really dense and then if and it's just they crawl
Speaker 1: over each other. It smells horrendous because they dig up
Speaker 1: old nests that have been decaying, so it's really really disgusting.
Speaker 1: They throw sand in your face when you're trying to
Speaker 1: do something. If you forget your backpack somewhere, there's a
Speaker 1: good chance and one of the females just gets stucks
Speaker 1: with her flipper and just like drags it down into
Speaker 1: the water. It's just insanity for like four or seven nights,
Speaker 1: and then it's gone. And you wouldn't even know that
Speaker 1: this just happened if it wouldn't be for you know,
Speaker 1: usually the vultures and dogs that are digging up nests
Speaker 1: and you see all these you know, little white have
Speaker 1: pieces which are all egg pieces on the beach and
Speaker 1: it's still smells a little bit funny, but that is
Speaker 1: what the nativada is. It's it's absolutely impressive. I would
Speaker 1: say if you ever get a chance to see one,
Speaker 1: definitely do it. Now that the rotten eggs, of the
Speaker 1: decayed eggs that are being dug up, now are those
Speaker 1: the percentage of eggs that are just always lost generally,
Speaker 1: because I understand there's I've seen it broken down to
Speaker 1: where like there's a certain percentage of eggs they just
Speaker 1: never hatch and remain in the ground. And then you
Speaker 1: get into the survival rates for each stage of the
Speaker 1: sea turtle. Yeah, okay, so there's with the adivada, it's
Speaker 1: it's a little bit more complicated it. Let's say that
Speaker 1: way because you have so since it's happening every month,
Speaker 1: and the nest usually needs about forty five to fifty
Speaker 1: five days to incubate, So that means if you are
Speaker 1: one of the very first females that are coming up
Speaker 1: in adibada number one, let's say, then this nest that
Speaker 1: is late at that day has to actually survive to adivadas, right,
Speaker 1: it has to survive all the females that are coming
Speaker 1: after her, and then in thirty days it has to
Speaker 1: survive the next adibada up until it has incubated enough
Speaker 1: to hatch. So those nests are not super likely to
Speaker 1: survive in certain times of the year, especially also because
Speaker 1: there is you know, there's a super high density of nests.
Speaker 1: So um, it means it's it's um Yeah, like one
Speaker 1: square meters has a ton of nest really way too many,
Speaker 1: and so that means there is a lot of microbiota
Speaker 1: on the beach you kind of like I always think
Speaker 1: of a compost, because the sand even on Atibada beaches
Speaker 1: is not really sad, it's more like soil um. And
Speaker 1: so you know, the bacteria of course are affecting first
Speaker 1: of all the supply of oxygen that the eggs are having,
Speaker 1: and of course they're also you know, infecting the eggs
Speaker 1: and just like you know, doing damage in other ways.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing is of course that the heat.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately and a lot of the Adi Bada beaches
Speaker 1: there are in areas where we already have a lot
Speaker 1: of problem with high temperatures because of climate change, and
Speaker 1: so the rising temperatures are pretty much lethal. Um. So
Speaker 1: that means the incubation temperatures way too high for any
Speaker 1: egg to survive. So in Austria now um during dry
Speaker 1: season these incubate. Just the hatching success of the nest
Speaker 1: that have survived till the end it's only about fiftent
Speaker 1: I think, which is very very low, one five, so
Speaker 1: it's it's not very good. And then of course it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to quantify of how many eggs or nest
Speaker 1: from the initially eight ones actually even making it to
Speaker 1: that point. And I mean there's this one thing that
Speaker 1: is also contributing to it. In Austinal at least there
Speaker 1: is um. I think the world only legal egg harvests,
Speaker 1: So the village is allowed in the first seventy two
Speaker 1: hours of each Adibada to harvest as many nests pretty
Speaker 1: much as they're able to. Um. They're justifying it with
Speaker 1: the fact that hey, those nests would have the lowest
Speaker 1: chance of survival anyways, so we're just kind of taking
Speaker 1: them and selling them to the markets where people still
Speaker 1: want to buy secret likes. It is a little bit controversial.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you want to go into that,
Speaker 1: but that is happening as well. So that means and
Speaker 1: of course if you would collect data on it, it
Speaker 1: doesn't it it is totally um. Yeah, it's going because
Speaker 1: you don't know, you know what would be if they
Speaker 1: would lend those nests in the sand now in Costa
Speaker 1: Rica aside from the dogs that you mentioned, what what
Speaker 1: other mammals are getting in on the feast here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in Austria now thinks it's pretty developed. It's really
Speaker 1: the dogs, the vultures, mammals, raccoons, squatties which are the
Speaker 1: raccoon family more than anything. But we do have also
Speaker 1: an Ali Bada nesting beach which is in a national
Speaker 1: park in Santa Rosa, and they actually have jaguars on
Speaker 1: and the ati vada there is just because also, I mean,
Speaker 1: just because you have the synchronized mass nesting, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean all of your olive really turtles are also engaging
Speaker 1: in that nesting behavior. There's some plasticity, and some females
Speaker 1: nest solitarily, just like any other turtle species as well.
Speaker 1: So I mean most beaches have olive really nesting year
Speaker 1: round and almost every single night you have like one
Speaker 1: or two turtles, and so that olive really population is
Speaker 1: sustaining a pretty large jaguar population in in in nun
Speaker 1: sat in Santa Rosa National Park because you know, they
Speaker 1: can just actually patrol just like we do, the waterline
Speaker 1: up and down and when the rest two look coming out,
Speaker 1: they're not super fast on land, and the jaguar just
Speaker 1: grasped them, drags them up to the vegetation and then
Speaker 1: as you know, it depends if they have babies. Or not,
Speaker 1: But it takes about two to three days, so that
Speaker 1: turtles gone and then they started hunting again. M So
Speaker 1: all kinds of questions are running through my mind about this.
Speaker 1: So first of all, I apologize if you alluded to
Speaker 1: the answers to either of these already. One is, do
Speaker 1: we have any idea what the queue is that triggers
Speaker 1: all of the turtles to come up onto the beach,
Speaker 1: because you said they gather offshore and then at some
Speaker 1: point they all just start coming in waves. Do you
Speaker 1: do we know why that happens or what causes it? So,
Speaker 1: I mean the why there is some hypotheses. One of
Speaker 1: them is a predator prevention strategy, so that you pretty much,
Speaker 1: just as when you're nesting, you're trying to overwhelm any
Speaker 1: potential predator. Uh. And then when the babies are hatching,
Speaker 1: since they're all hatching at the exact same time, right,
Speaker 1: so you have to think about half a million nests,
Speaker 1: or even if it's just a few hundred thousand nests
Speaker 1: hatching at the same time time, that means there's millions
Speaker 1: of millions of babies that just you know, scramble to
Speaker 1: make their way to to the ocean. So again, you know,
Speaker 1: if your predator, you can eat one or two or
Speaker 1: three or even more, but it's not going to be
Speaker 1: all of them. So it's it's a pretty pretty good
Speaker 1: predator prevention strategy. So that's the why. Possibly the how
Speaker 1: that is actually a question that we have answered to
Speaker 1: a certain degree. Um so we know that it has
Speaker 1: something to do with the lunar cycle, So that is
Speaker 1: pretty much solid. We know that for decades already. And
Speaker 1: it depends on a little bit on the synchronized mass
Speaker 1: nesting beaches. So we have the Yeah, the majority of
Speaker 1: the beaches actually in Central America, so Mexico has a
Speaker 1: really large one, Costa Rica has a large one, and
Speaker 1: they're like smaller ones in in in Panama and in
Speaker 1: in Nicarago as well, And it depends a little bit
Speaker 1: of which beach we're talking about. What the lunar cycle is.
Speaker 1: For Oustinale, it is usually the week before our new moon.
Speaker 1: So that means that is a pretty good indicator that
Speaker 1: I would say probably of the time is giving you
Speaker 1: a good idea of when this studibad is going to happen.
Speaker 1: Whereas in Escobiya, I think it also happens sometimes like
Speaker 1: a week before full moon. So um, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: exceptions always exist in ospinal as well, but usually the
Speaker 1: indicator is new moon. And then what we don't know though,
Speaker 1: is so you can see already, you know, let's say
Speaker 1: it's like about a week before new moon, and you
Speaker 1: see already in the wives, you know, thousands of turtles
Speaker 1: just swimming. The heads are bobbing up, and you're just like, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: it's going to be happening every every moment. Now, what
Speaker 1: we don't know is what is the actual whistle that
Speaker 1: I've talked about, You know, what is it really that
Speaker 1: says it is now and not tomorrow and not yesterday,
Speaker 1: but exactly now, And that we don't know. So they
Speaker 1: have been you know, kind of high paclity, such as maybe, um,
Speaker 1: the females are having some type of pheromone that they're
Speaker 1: releasing and if it reaches a certain concentration that might
Speaker 1: be triggering it. But we don't really know. We really
Speaker 1: don't know. The other thing I was wondering was, um,
Speaker 1: do we have any indication whether the incredible density of
Speaker 1: the nesting is is that totally natural or I When
Speaker 1: I see something like that, I would kind of wonder
Speaker 1: is that something that could be caused by I don't know,
Speaker 1: changes that are going on, like anything that humans do
Speaker 1: would drive that sort of incredible density. Do we know
Speaker 1: anything about that? Yeah, well it's not that we have
Speaker 1: like solid data, and so I would say probably not
Speaker 1: human cost. What I would say though, is that we
Speaker 1: I really curious a scientist to study the evolution and
Speaker 1: the progression of Atribada nesting beaches because Austin now actually
Speaker 1: has a village for more than a hundred and thirty years,
Speaker 1: so that means there's really good historical data of you know,
Speaker 1: when they started to have an actual synchronized mass nesting,
Speaker 1: because it's not that they always had one, you know,
Speaker 1: so it started at some point um and it's still there.
Speaker 1: But and that's more or less. My personal hypothesis is
Speaker 1: that I really think adri Bada beach choose a kind
Speaker 1: of getting going extinct at one point if you would
Speaker 1: let them take the natural course, because it is a
Speaker 1: solid it's a serious overuse of the beach, right, you
Speaker 1: have so much nest and you can see from the
Speaker 1: studies at austeonalis well like the hatching success just over
Speaker 1: twenty thirty years just like it's consistently decreasing, and if
Speaker 1: you would just let the beach do what it would
Speaker 1: usually do, or like the turtles to what they usually do,
Speaker 1: the hatching success right which is probably be zero at
Speaker 1: one point, so there would be no next generation. But
Speaker 1: I mean, I have the suspicion it's really hard to
Speaker 1: prove that the you know, the egg harvest is probably
Speaker 1: are it officially keeping that beach alive, you know, because
Speaker 1: it is raising the hatching success to at least the
Speaker 1: level there is still babies, but it's very low. So
Speaker 1: that actually might be detrimental to the population later on
Speaker 1: because maybe they would have already looked for another beach
Speaker 1: right at this point. What makes me think that is
Speaker 1: is that we have two new beaches now that weren't
Speaker 1: Ali Bada beaches before that. Now, in the past i
Speaker 1: would say six or seven years, have started to have
Speaker 1: synchronized mass nest things, and they are getting more and more.
Speaker 1: In the beginning it was like one per year, and
Speaker 1: then it was like three, and I think the last
Speaker 1: one was like almost eight synchronized mass nestings and one
Speaker 1: of them which is and it's getting bigger and bigger
Speaker 1: as well, So I think that's you know, there is
Speaker 1: a natural life cycle to an auti bada, which which
Speaker 1: logically it makes sense, right if you if you over
Speaker 1: use something, then at one point there is nothing more left,
Speaker 1: like when you over use the soil for plants or else,
Speaker 1: and so you have to look for something else. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it will be really interesting to kind of study that.
Speaker 1: You know, how new synchronized mass nesting beaches are developing,
Speaker 1: how long they really stay like that and until the
Speaker 1: turtles move on somewhere else, and also what triggers it, right,
Speaker 1: because if it would be really some kind of mechanism
Speaker 1: that is just going over the next generation, that would
Speaker 1: be I mean Olive Ridley's reach sexual maturity with about
Speaker 1: fifteen to five years. So that's a lot like feedback cycle,
Speaker 1: you know if you think about it. So maybe it's
Speaker 1: something else. So can you explain how temperature plays a
Speaker 1: role in the development of sea turtle eggs and then
Speaker 1: and then how does climate change impact this process? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so temperature in the life of sea turtles is super important,
Speaker 1: as we already talked about it. You know, they needed
Speaker 1: to warm up their body. But the unequol thing is
Speaker 1: that the sex of sea turtles is determined by the
Speaker 1: incubation temperature, so that means they do not have sex
Speaker 1: chromosomes as we humans have, for example, so you know,
Speaker 1: usually it's x x and you become female biologically, or
Speaker 1: it's x y and your male biologically. And in sea
Speaker 1: turtles is actually the second third of the incubation time.
Speaker 1: That's where higher temperatures are leading to more females gradually.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's not like a switch and it's all
Speaker 1: females or all males, and cooler temperatures are leading to
Speaker 1: more males. So in English at least they have this
Speaker 1: you know, hot chicks and cool dudes, and if you
Speaker 1: want to remember how that is. Interestingly though, it is
Speaker 1: not the same in all turtles. Since turtles it's exactly that,
Speaker 1: but there's other turtle species, freshwater turtles and tortoises that
Speaker 1: actually sometimes have two peaks. So it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of middle temperature produces more males, and like really
Speaker 1: cool and really hot temperaturesly do females. There's all kinds
Speaker 1: of variation within that group of turtles, but the anti
Speaker 1: turtles it is that, and that of course means nowadays
Speaker 1: where we are having rising temperatures because of climate change,
Speaker 1: and a lot of places we are overproducing females. So
Speaker 1: there's beaches where we have pretty much almost high you
Speaker 1: present females that we're producing, So there's some status. It
Speaker 1: really depends on which region you're looking at and what species.
Speaker 1: But that is like you know, one male to nine
Speaker 1: females or even worse worst case scenarios than that, which
Speaker 1: might not be a problem right now because like I said,
Speaker 1: it takes a while to the reach sexual maturity. But
Speaker 1: once they've reached sexual maturity, and if population sizes are
Speaker 1: already small, there might be just not enough males around
Speaker 1: to fertilize the females and eggs. So that is really
Speaker 1: concerning um. And in that sense, and some of the
Speaker 1: you know, conservation measures that we have is for example,
Speaker 1: that we're shading our nests in order to you know,
Speaker 1: artificially increase the amount of males that we're producing, just
Speaker 1: to counteract a little bit those those impacts that climate change. UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's causing. UM. I had a question, you want to
Speaker 1: come back to something you said earlier about the resiliency
Speaker 1: of sea turtles, and you mentioned mentioned like missing flippers
Speaker 1: and injuries that that they have survived. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this recently because I got to snorkele in um
Speaker 1: in Mau among some green sea turtles, and I got
Speaker 1: to observe them there, and there was one in particular,
Speaker 1: and I know it was I kept seeing it because
Speaker 1: it had a number tag on its shell and it
Speaker 1: was missing a front flipper. And every time I would
Speaker 1: see it, I would I would marvel at it because
Speaker 1: I and then I would ask questions in my head how.
Speaker 1: I was wondering, like, has this a turtle, I mean
Speaker 1: that has that has been injured and then has been
Speaker 1: re released? Or is this just how resilient they are
Speaker 1: that it could sustain an injury like this survive And
Speaker 1: you know, I mean how does I guess they just
Speaker 1: have questions about just just how they manage that. It
Speaker 1: seems like, I know, if I lost a limb in
Speaker 1: the ocean, I would just be dead. Uh how does
Speaker 1: the sea turtle pull it off? Yeah? So I think
Speaker 1: they have incredible healing powers to just say what I've seen.
Speaker 1: For example, I remember one particular level bag that came
Speaker 1: with absolutely horrible cuts from she must have gotten somehow
Speaker 1: entangled in fisher nets. Luckily, she was freed, maybe by
Speaker 1: the fisherman themselves, but it was just a nasty cut
Speaker 1: all across like the soft part of her shoulders. It
Speaker 1: was bleeding, it was in facted. She was really smelling
Speaker 1: as well. It was pretty disgusting. And um, so sea
Speaker 1: turtles don't nest just once per season, so they usually nest,
Speaker 1: you know, in the case of leather bags on average,
Speaker 1: about five to seven times and have very distinct rensting intervals.
Speaker 1: So I know in other backs its about ten days.
Speaker 1: So that means I knew already, okay, you know, she
Speaker 1: will come back hopefully, and so you know, the next
Speaker 1: time she came back, I kind of had some antibiotic
Speaker 1: appointment that I was, you know, trying and had like
Speaker 1: an antibotic pill that I just broke open and tried
Speaker 1: to like clean it a little bit. Um. But the
Speaker 1: interesting thing was really within the ten days that she
Speaker 1: came back, the wound already had pretty much clothes. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just like, you know, pretty deep, and you
Speaker 1: could see, you know, it was like through the fat
Speaker 1: layer and you could see things that I think you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to be seeing. Um. Yeah, and it is
Speaker 1: just so impressive of how quickly in ten days, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole thing had already pretty much closed. And yeah,
Speaker 1: she had an ugly sca, but she's definitely able to
Speaker 1: live or in the other Like another example is that
Speaker 1: I saw a female that came up onto the beach.
Speaker 1: So I caught her in the process of just walking
Speaker 1: up on the beach, and she was dragging something behind her,
Speaker 1: and you know, it looked like fishing net, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure, so I kind of went closer, switched on
Speaker 1: my light and what I saw I was, Yes, it
Speaker 1: was fishing net, but she also pretty much dragged her
Speaker 1: dead leg that was literally just hanging on on like
Speaker 1: one ligament, totally blown up, and oh, I mean the
Speaker 1: whole net, like the whole fishing I had already cut
Speaker 1: through the entire bone um and she was pulling, you know,
Speaker 1: this dead leg on that ligament and there's like a
Speaker 1: huge bulk of fishing line behind her and she was
Speaker 1: still nest I mean, I mean, this is just mind blowing,
Speaker 1: right if you think about it, it's just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: she's probably in pain, she is in the process of
Speaker 1: losing an entire flipper, but this urge to come onto
Speaker 1: the beach to still reproduce. It is so big. And
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that she survived quite honestly, because I
Speaker 1: mean where it was cutted, I had already closed, so
Speaker 1: I just kind of the fishing gear um, and then
Speaker 1: you know, I could tell that she kind of flinched
Speaker 1: when I was trying to touch the one ligament. So
Speaker 1: what I did is because I didn't have anything, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to cut through it, so I just
Speaker 1: took like one little piece of fishing eye and just
Speaker 1: like pretty much did a tourney catch, just like you know,
Speaker 1: try to find it off from all but supply and
Speaker 1: out great would just fall off eventually. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: gets scory than one of the things I saw when
Speaker 1: we were coming in here. I know you've talked before
Speaker 1: the incident with the straw and the turtles nose, but
Speaker 1: one of the ones I saw was a a video
Speaker 1: you had uploaded where you were trying to remove a
Speaker 1: fishing net from a turtle's neck and that it had
Speaker 1: cut in all around the neck. I think was it
Speaker 1: a leather back or um that was an olive red
Speaker 1: lay as well. Yeah, it was exactly in front of
Speaker 1: us to now so that one of those synchronized mass
Speaker 1: inesting beaches, and yeah, that wasn't very typical. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't always have the chance to film
Speaker 1: everything that we see because you know, sometimes for me
Speaker 1: it's more important to actually you know, release them and
Speaker 1: not thinking about it. They can obously film it. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's a very typical side unfortunately. I mean
Speaker 1: this one was a little bit worse because it was
Speaker 1: around her neck. A lot of times it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's the flippers, um. But yeah, I mean usually what
Speaker 1: all you can do is like, you know, believe what
Speaker 1: she has and then just hope that the wounds will
Speaker 1: pretty much heal themselves, which usually they do, um. Because
Speaker 1: it's even not that easy to kill a turtle. So
Speaker 1: we had another case where I was called in um
Speaker 1: and there was a turtle on the beach that had
Speaker 1: been what we don't know what came first, but dogs
Speaker 1: were around her, had pretty much attacked her, had eaten
Speaker 1: into her body cavity, so from you know, when you
Speaker 1: have the heads and the shell, so like the soft
Speaker 1: pipe is the shoulder part, and so the dogs had
Speaker 1: just taken chunks out of it, and she was in
Speaker 1: a really bad shape like way worse than Yeah, I
Speaker 1: did not think, Okay, I can just throw her in
Speaker 1: the water and she's going to be fine. So I
Speaker 1: contacted the VETS that is close by. But of course
Speaker 1: the veterinarians are usually not specialized in reptiles, so reptiles
Speaker 1: are very specific. Which even when we talked about you know,
Speaker 1: like in the aftermath of Sea turtle straw videos, like
Speaker 1: why didn't you take it to a vent? Why didn't
Speaker 1: you like anesthesize the turtles? It is actually not that
Speaker 1: easy and pretty dangerous to anesthesize the reptile because the
Speaker 1: actual therm and like how the metabolism works, more times
Speaker 1: than not, you might actually end up killing them. So
Speaker 1: you know, um, you have to really find a vet
Speaker 1: that knows how to dose everything to not kill them.
Speaker 1: And most of the times they would also up to
Speaker 1: not do it and rather do whatever they need to
Speaker 1: do um without yeah, tranquilizing or anesthesizing the animal, just
Speaker 1: because it is so dangerous. And then of course, you know,
Speaker 1: you go to the VETS that is specialized for cats
Speaker 1: and dogs and you're like kind of like, hey, I
Speaker 1: have this tea turtle and he was like yeah, that
Speaker 1: is like oh god, she needs to be euthanized. And
Speaker 1: then it was really interesting because we had to look
Speaker 1: up in the internet how to euthanize a turtle and
Speaker 1: it is really I mean, um, first of all, it's
Speaker 1: you can use a toxine that we didn't have at hand,
Speaker 1: So we had to find pretty much like other ways
Speaker 1: of how we could you know, humanely euthanize that turtle
Speaker 1: because I had seen it already. When coachers, um, you know,
Speaker 1: try to to take the meat of turtles or the
Speaker 1: eggs that are still in in in inside of the overducts,
Speaker 1: they of times don't even bother killing the turtles, so
Speaker 1: they hack off the flippers and then they kind of
Speaker 1: cut out the plastron, you know, the belly pipe, and
Speaker 1: just open the turtle and the turtles fully conscious in
Speaker 1: a life. And I have seen turtles that had literally
Speaker 1: no organs left anymore besides the lung and the heart
Speaker 1: because the meat was taken, the eggs were taken, and
Speaker 1: the heart was still beating. I mean, it's it's absolutely
Speaker 1: it's it's it's really really sad and really impacting to
Speaker 1: see that. So we had this turtle we needed to euthanize,
Speaker 1: and I mean, the only way of how when I
Speaker 1: was talking to two vests were like, well, you have
Speaker 1: to drill a hole into her head and you make
Speaker 1: sure that you really hit the brand as quickly as possible,
Speaker 1: so you know, she goes quickly and doesn't feel anything anymore.
Speaker 1: So it was a little bit traumatizing for all of us,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that. But yeah, because we had
Speaker 1: to find, like, you know, a drill somewhere. It was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was not a dosn't thing that we we had
Speaker 1: to do them. But it shows you a lot about
Speaker 1: resilience and also you know how they work and how
Speaker 1: they yeah, not die, I guess that quickly. So you're
Speaker 1: talking about the the idea of the sea turtle being
Speaker 1: attacked by dogs um or even by humans. It makes
Speaker 1: me realize the question that apologies if this is a
Speaker 1: very dumb question. So we have experience with some terrestrial
Speaker 1: turtles like the box turtle that can fully retract inside
Speaker 1: the shell. Is that not Is there any kind of
Speaker 1: retraction defensive capability and sea turtles or can they partially
Speaker 1: do that or not at all? Or what? This is
Speaker 1: a really good question. I don't think it's a dumb
Speaker 1: question at all, because it's one of the most identifying
Speaker 1: features off sea turtles that they can not retract the
Speaker 1: limbs into the shell, so they can kind of pull
Speaker 1: their head in a little bit like in the case
Speaker 1: of example, green turtles um, but not really so it's
Speaker 1: not you know, like this typical image that you have
Speaker 1: where they just like disappear into their shell. They can't.
Speaker 1: So the reason of why that is is, first of all,
Speaker 1: they have their shell has become very streamlined in in
Speaker 1: the course of evolution, so they're like super hydrodynamic um
Speaker 1: which also decreases the space inside of the shell if
Speaker 1: you think about like these high domed tortoises for example
Speaker 1: that we have on land. And then the other thing
Speaker 1: is is that the main locomotive, like the main engine,
Speaker 1: are the front flippers, right, so they have you know,
Speaker 1: they it's almost looks like like an airplane. The why
Speaker 1: how they like kind of go through the water or
Speaker 1: like flying, like bursting and kind of flapping, you know,
Speaker 1: their power strokes with both flippers. But that means they're
Speaker 1: um that chest muscles have grown so large that they
Speaker 1: have taken up a lot more space than in other turtles.
Speaker 1: And that is also one of the reasons that they
Speaker 1: can't retract it into their shell anymore. And now in
Speaker 1: terms of just sort of the general temperament of the
Speaker 1: sea turtle, um, do you do you find that like
Speaker 1: different sea turtle species or even individuals have different demeanors
Speaker 1: or some shire around human divers or snorkelers for example. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's definitely a difference between species. So olive
Speaker 1: redleys and leather bags are seldomly face, especially if we're
Speaker 1: talking about mass nesting turtles. So if you have solitary
Speaker 1: nesting turtles a little bit more skittish, um, but your
Speaker 1: leather bags and olive redleys are really kind of like,
Speaker 1: I don't care, so you can handle them while they're nesting.
Speaker 1: So they're in this like you know, supposed to be
Speaker 1: nesting trends that really kind of you know, they're only
Speaker 1: concentrating of dropping their eggs and and and anything that
Speaker 1: happens around them. They really don't seem to notice. But
Speaker 1: in the case of hawk spills and greens, both of
Speaker 1: those turtle species as super skittish, so it comes you know,
Speaker 1: even when they come up, even when they're already dropping
Speaker 1: the eggs, which you know, supposedly the in the nesting trends.
Speaker 1: The protocols that we have in place usually means, okay,
Speaker 1: if you're not able to you know, really carefully collect
Speaker 1: eggs or whatever, better, don't touch them. Let they do
Speaker 1: their thing, and then we're going to collect the data
Speaker 1: so you know, we don't disturb the actual egg lane
Speaker 1: process as and then of course within individuals. UM, when
Speaker 1: we were doing especially the olive redly sampling, I always
Speaker 1: felt that smaller turtles were way more faisty than like
Speaker 1: the big, big ones. Um maybe it had something to
Speaker 1: do with, you know, being more edgile because you were smaller.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's sometimes also had seemed to have
Speaker 1: something to do of how high the temperatures were. So
Speaker 1: you know, if you grab a turtle that maybe has
Speaker 1: just woken up and hadn't had time to really go
Speaker 1: to the surface and sun basketball to really kind of
Speaker 1: wake up and get their metabalism going, um, there might
Speaker 1: be a little bit more sluggish. Then if you have
Speaker 1: one turtle that has been already you know, absorbed all
Speaker 1: the heat energy and the muscles are all ready for action,
Speaker 1: and then they start fighting you when you have them
Speaker 1: on the boat. Now I realized there's a lot to
Speaker 1: impact with this question, and I think we've touched on
Speaker 1: it a little bit at least already in the conversation.
Speaker 1: But what are the biggest threats to see turtles today
Speaker 1: and when? What the current state of turtle conservation? What
Speaker 1: are the most important things we we are doing to
Speaker 1: help them and can do to help them? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: first up, I think we have to say very clearly
Speaker 1: that all seven sea turtles species are considered endangered in
Speaker 1: one shape or form. I mean, this's like you know
Speaker 1: the i U c N that is um cur writing
Speaker 1: the Red List of Endangered Species as having certain categories
Speaker 1: uh and different sea turtles species and even different within
Speaker 1: the species, different populations have sometimes different status is. But
Speaker 1: I think as a generalizing term, they are all somehow
Speaker 1: endangered um nowadays. And then if we think about the threats,
Speaker 1: it's just it's not just one. I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: much the exact same ones that when we talk about
Speaker 1: our ocean in general, it's exactly the same things that
Speaker 1: are also endangering sea turtles. So of course the biggie
Speaker 1: is climate change. So we already talked about temperatures that
Speaker 1: are super important to see turtles and a rising temperatures
Speaker 1: are creating you know, issues with the yeah, overproduction of females.
Speaker 1: But the other biggie is also um sea level rice,
Speaker 1: So we have nesting habitat that is disappearing because sea
Speaker 1: levels are rising and nesting beaches are disappearing. Then the
Speaker 1: big category that is next is of course ocean pollution,
Speaker 1: and there we can talk about oil spills that are
Speaker 1: happening way too frequently and it's not always at the
Speaker 1: press reports about it. We can talk about the not
Speaker 1: so visible pollution through fertilizers and pesticides that comes from
Speaker 1: our agriculture, agricultural activities on land that leads to diseases
Speaker 1: such as fiberprobic ploma which is kind of a virus
Speaker 1: disease that causes really crazy tumors and sea turtles UM.
Speaker 1: Then of course plastic pollution, So every single species of
Speaker 1: sea turtles has been documented to have ingested plastic already. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of times when we have dead turtles we
Speaker 1: cut them open that is full of plastic. Interesting fact,
Speaker 1: the first ingestion of plastic and sea turtles was actually
Speaker 1: found in leather bags. So the first paper that was
Speaker 1: published on that was published in the nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 1: then the same author actually went back to all records
Speaker 1: from like I think the six season seventies to see
Speaker 1: for evidence if somebody else had been recording plastic, and
Speaker 1: they did find that even before that time, people had
Speaker 1: already found plastic in in in sea turtles in leather
Speaker 1: bags specifically. And then the other thing, of course, is
Speaker 1: over exploitation. So in many, many, many developing countries in Asia, Africa,
Speaker 1: South America, Central America, people still take sea turtle eggs
Speaker 1: because they believe either they're better than chicken eggs or
Speaker 1: they believe it's a type of natural viagraa so older
Speaker 1: men try to increase their sex drive by yeah, by
Speaker 1: by eating sea turtle eggs. But there's also still a
Speaker 1: ult you're around consuming sea turtle meat, especially the meat
Speaker 1: of green turtles, which as you know, dates back many
Speaker 1: many centuries to sailors and other seafares that love taking
Speaker 1: turtles because they're just there's amazing protein source and turtles
Speaker 1: don't need much so they don't need much water, they
Speaker 1: don't need much food. But to keep them alive sometimes
Speaker 1: you can tie them outside of the boat and when
Speaker 1: you need one, you just slaughter them and then you
Speaker 1: have fresh meat. And then um, the other one is
Speaker 1: the in the exploitation range is the seatootle shell trap,
Speaker 1: which is affecting especially hawks bill turtles, so tortoise shell
Speaker 1: I think you might have seen the pattern. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: it's for for jewelry, for or for forum for glasses,
Speaker 1: for reading glasses and else. Um yeah, that's also long history.
Speaker 1: And then of course the other biggie is um over fishing.
Speaker 1: So industrial fishing just doesn't just you know, catch target species,
Speaker 1: but how the incredible amount of bycatch what we call
Speaker 1: incidental takes, So it's species that were not meant to
Speaker 1: be fished but end up in those nets or on
Speaker 1: those lines as well. And since sea turtles, like I said,
Speaker 1: already need to breathe air, um, they're actually sometimes a
Speaker 1: lot of times not able to surface and drown on
Speaker 1: those nets. And we it's really it's an overwhelming number
Speaker 1: of turtles that die every single year in fishing operations,
Speaker 1: and it is really sad, especially when you think about
Speaker 1: overexploitation in needs in turtle shell and also in in
Speaker 1: um in the fishing lines. Is that you know, there
Speaker 1: is a very low chance for babies to survive, but
Speaker 1: once you've reached a certain side as a sea turtle,
Speaker 1: there's really not that many natural predators, and since it
Speaker 1: takes such a long time for a sea turtle to
Speaker 1: reach sexual maturity, each individual is so valuable to the population,
Speaker 1: and it's exactly those individuals that die, you know, when
Speaker 1: you want to have neat, when you want to have
Speaker 1: turtle shell, or if you have bycatch. Now, when you
Speaker 1: mentioned the effects of plastics on sea turtles, with the
Speaker 1: human activity that causes this primarily be the high volume
Speaker 1: use of of single use plastics or other things too,
Speaker 1: or what do you think is the you know, the
Speaker 1: day to day human activity that contributes most of that
Speaker 1: in the ocean. I think there's a lot of misconception
Speaker 1: about how plastic, first of all, ends up in our
Speaker 1: ocean and how plastic waste is created. It is very
Speaker 1: overwhelming of how much tons of plastic we are having
Speaker 1: each year, and it's increasing exponentially. So in just two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen, which is already six years back, we
Speaker 1: were already produced between four hundred and five hundred million
Speaker 1: metric tons of of of plastic each year, which good
Speaker 1: is mainly for food wrapping and packaging, and about produced
Speaker 1: only for single use. Right, So you have this lyrical
Speaker 1: product plastic that can last for high rids of years,
Speaker 1: and you're using it for the use of like literary
Speaker 1: seconds or minutes, and a lot of times, especially those
Speaker 1: single use plastics are first of all, not recyclable at all,
Speaker 1: because there are two lights in the way of how
Speaker 1: you know recycling is processed. But even if they were
Speaker 1: recycling recyclable, the reality is that only about four to
Speaker 1: nine percent of the plastic really gets recycled. So you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people feel good because it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I recycle, I'm not the back like you know, I
Speaker 1: dispose of my trash responsibly. But the problem is most developing,
Speaker 1: its most developed countries are actually sending their plastic trash
Speaker 1: to developing countries. So the US, Europe, European countries, we're
Speaker 1: are sending our trash to Asia. Used to send it
Speaker 1: to China, but now it's going to Indonesia, to Malaysia,
Speaker 1: to other places which have not a great waste management program.
Speaker 1: And you know, since so little really like you know, recyclable,
Speaker 1: it will end up in our oceans anyways. Right, So
Speaker 1: even you at home, separated and you felt good about
Speaker 1: yourself because you did a good job, but in the
Speaker 1: end it will end up in landfills that might not
Speaker 1: be so well managed, even within the U. S. If
Speaker 1: you just think about you know, hurricanes, so you have
Speaker 1: an open landfill, you know, the next hurricane that kind
Speaker 1: of goes through, what do you think is going to
Speaker 1: happen to your trash? You know, it's going to be
Speaker 1: ending up in the waterways, and eventually it will also
Speaker 1: end up in the ocean. So it's not just you know,
Speaker 1: cruise boats or container ships that are creating all the
Speaker 1: plastic trash, or the people that visit the beaches and
Speaker 1: leave their trash behind. No, it's every single person in
Speaker 1: the world that is contributing to the issue. I want
Speaker 1: to make that very clear because that's always the easy
Speaker 1: way out where people are just saying, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: part of the problem. We're all part of the problem.
Speaker 1: And I think the other problem is it's like the
Speaker 1: convenience people are just so used to kind of rapid
Speaker 1: consumption of food and everything and beverages and um in
Speaker 1: the pandemic, now you know just the amount of takeout
Speaker 1: that has been probably um yeah, perpetuated because you know
Speaker 1: everybody is at home and wants to still eat something
Speaker 1: from a restaurant. And so the style form containers, the
Speaker 1: plastic bottles, the plastic cups, the plastic cutlery, all of
Speaker 1: that needs to go somewhere, right And yeah, it usually
Speaker 1: doesn't get recycled, and it will somehow end up in
Speaker 1: our environment in one way or another. So that means
Speaker 1: the only thing that we can really do is is
Speaker 1: really try to reduce our use of plastic as much
Speaker 1: as we can. And I'm not trying to say, you know, oh,
Speaker 1: we need all to be like completely plastic free, because
Speaker 1: that is it's a utopia that is not possible. I
Speaker 1: mean my computer that I'm using to speak to you
Speaker 1: right now, the you know, certain things that I use
Speaker 1: for my science doctors that are using the syringdery. It's
Speaker 1: just like there's certain advantages you know of plastic that
Speaker 1: I think are super important for us as a species.
Speaker 1: Is well, but do we really need to use plastic
Speaker 1: for like, um, you know, to drink out of a
Speaker 1: cup where we don't even need, ah, you know, a
Speaker 1: straw in the first place. If if we're able body people,
Speaker 1: we can just drink out of the cup or you know,
Speaker 1: if you're getting take out, um, and you have all
Speaker 1: your silver at home, why do you need to get
Speaker 1: plastic cutlery? Right? It's just it's so easy. I get
Speaker 1: it because you don't have to wash it up, you
Speaker 1: just throw it out. But there is a price to it,
Speaker 1: you know, there's always a price, and somebody has to
Speaker 1: pay the price, and a lot of times, unfortunately it's
Speaker 1: the wildlife, um that is praying the price and not us.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that you think would be really
Speaker 1: important to hit before we wrap up here? Very important?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just you know, want to motivate
Speaker 1: people to really understand that there is a certain degree
Speaker 1: that we have as there's a degree of power that
Speaker 1: we have as consumer, right, So I do not want
Speaker 1: to try to fool you into believing that the consumers
Speaker 1: are the ones that are really you know, having to
Speaker 1: carry all the responsibility for for example, of plastic pollution.
Speaker 1: It's really the large companies that are creating most of
Speaker 1: our our problem. But we can vote with our decision
Speaker 1: like with our choices, right, So if if you spend
Speaker 1: your money with a certain company, you're voting for that
Speaker 1: money quite literally. So I just think we need to
Speaker 1: be more conscious about how we're spending our money. And
Speaker 1: I just always try to convince people just to consume less,
Speaker 1: just buy less crap, because it's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: I get it. Capitalism is trying to make you buy
Speaker 1: more and more and tries to, you know, make you
Speaker 1: believe that you need this newest thing. But it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's not true. It really isn't true. And
Speaker 1: I think we just need to be a lot more
Speaker 1: conscientious of of our consumer behavior and then we just
Speaker 1: become better consumers. I think. All right, well, Christine, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for chatting with us today and sharing all
Speaker 1: this great information about about about sea turtles. I feel
Speaker 1: like I learned learned so much today about about the
Speaker 1: the seven sea turtles we still have as well as
Speaker 1: their you know, their their current plight. So I guess
Speaker 1: what one thing to ask would be if anyone out
Speaker 1: there listening to this, if they want to follow you
Speaker 1: and your work online, where can they go to do so?
Speaker 1: Where do you like to send people? Yeah, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: active on Instagram, so I'm sea turtle biologists very easy.
Speaker 1: If you guys want to check out my Instagram. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to create content about you know, sea turtles and
Speaker 1: about plastic pollution and just giving ideas of of what's
Speaker 1: going on out in the field where I am. Um,
Speaker 1: that's definitely one way. And yeah, if you guys want
Speaker 1: to support my work, um, there is an app called
Speaker 1: milky Wire where you can become multi supporters I think
Speaker 1: starting at like about three or five dollars, so literally
Speaker 1: just like as if you would invite me to coffee
Speaker 1: each month. And that is a huge difference because that
Speaker 1: is pretty much how we sustain our conservation efforts, um,
Speaker 1: which is paying my guys that are patrolling the beaches
Speaker 1: trying to keep the turtles safe from poachers and make
Speaker 1: sure that the babies have a good chance of you know,
Speaker 1: having a good start in life. Yeah. I think that's
Speaker 1: probably the easiest way of connecting with me. Excellent, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: well again again, thanks so much for taking time out
Speaker 1: of your day to chat with us. This has been great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me. It was fun
Speaker 1: nording out about turtles all right. Thanks once more to
Speaker 1: Christine Figner for taking time out of her day to
Speaker 1: just chat with us about sea turtles and sea turtle conservation. Uh.
Speaker 1: That This was a real blast, and if you would
Speaker 1: like to to follow her on social media, uh, these
Speaker 1: are a few of the places you can end just
Speaker 1: in general on the internet. Here a few places you
Speaker 1: can go on Instagram, Uh, she is a sea turtle biologist.
Speaker 1: One word. On Facebook it is c F Figener. That's
Speaker 1: f I g g e n e r. And on Twitter, uh,
Speaker 1: she is Chris Figener, So that's Chris c h r
Speaker 1: I s f I g g e n e r.
Speaker 1: And you can also go to her website which is
Speaker 1: Sea Turtle Biologist dot com. And then the coast organization
Speaker 1: uh coasts dot cr on is the Instagram tag and
Speaker 1: you can uh that one is also connected to uh
Speaker 1: dr figeners Facebook account. We're gonna go and close it
Speaker 1: out there, But if you want to listen to other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find
Speaker 1: them in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed,
Speaker 1: with core science and culture episodes publishing on Tuesdays and
Speaker 1: Thursday's Artifact episode on Wednesday, Listener Mail on Monday, and
Speaker 1: on Friday's we do a little weird house cinema. That's
Speaker 1: our time to set the science aside and just focus
Speaker 1: on a weird movie huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
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