March 13, 2014 — Loggerhead sea turtles begin their adventure at a very early age. After hatching, they waddle off the beach into the surf and begin a journey that takes them clear across the ocean. Many loggerheads from the U.S. Atlantic coast turn up a few years later in the Canary Islands off West Africa. But how they get there, and what they encounter along the way, has long been a mystery.
Biologists had referred to this period of time as the sea turtles’ “lost years.” But those years are no longer lost to science. Kate Mansfield, who was doing her postdoctoral research at NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center at the time, led the team of university scientists that tracked the turtles’ migrations.
“What is exciting is that we provide the first look at the early behavior and movements of young sea turtles in the wild,” said Mansfield, who is now a biologist at the University of Central Florida.
They did that by attaching satellite tags to 17 young loggerhead sea turtles. The small, solar-powered tags allowed scientists to map the animals’ migrations. The tags also beamed back data on the environmental conditions the turtles encountered along the way.