Everybody loves sea turtles. With their cool shells, patient demeanors and adorable hatchlings, who wouldn’t? The broad carapaces covering their backs – punctuated by patterns of scutes, or hard scales – practically tell stories and present beautiful images. SEA TURTLES MAY BE LUMBERING ON SHORE but they’re perfectly suited for the life aquatic. They’re streamlined, with large, powerful front flippers that give them the wherewithal for great speed when they need it. And, anyway, they
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When leatherback and hawksbill sea turtles finish laying their eggs in newly dug nests on a beach, they pull a fast one on would be egg poachers. They create trails and decoy turtle nests a distance away from their real egg caches, scientists say in a new paper. ON THE NATURE DOCUMENTARIES, THE PROCESS OF SEA TURTLES NESTING ON THE BEACH is both charming and straightforward: Momma turtles crawl up the sand, dig a hole,
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In an innovative experiment to help find commercial fishing vessels poaching in restricted waters, scientists have attached tiny radar detectors to high-soaring albatrosses, renowned flyers known for their attraction to ships at sea. Patrolling albatrosses revealed that about a third of ships in the Southern Indian Ocean were seeking to avoid detection. TWO IMMUTABLE FACTS: 1) IF THERE’S FOOD AROUND, ANIMALS WILL SHOW UP FOR AN EASY MEAL. 2) There are always going to be
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As the world ponders ways to capture carbon and combat climate change, think about the idea of whales and carbon storage. During their long lifetimes, great whales takes gargantually more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than whole forests of trees – and keep it there. A new study underscores our cetacean cousins’ importance to our planet beyond just oceanic diversity. GREAT WHALES SWIMMING IN THE OCEANS DON’T SPRING TO MIND AS A SOLUTION TO
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FAMOUS AS LIZARDS THAT SWIM IN THE OCEANS, marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) are found in only one place: the Galapagos Archipelago in the eastern Pacific off Ecuador. Galapagos iguanas also include three species of non-swimming land iguanas. Some land iguanas found in the West Indies – like green iguanas (Iguana iguana) and rock iguanas (nine species in the genus Cyclura) – are also known to swim when called for, but not with the marine lifestyle of A.
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A NEW STUDY HAS FOUND THAT WHEN KILLER WHALES ARRIVE IN A FEEDING GROUND, GREAT WHITES SHARKS CLEAR OUT. In a study of great white sharks and killer whales, It turns out that great whites, renowned as the oceans’ apex predators, have apex predators of their own in orcas, or killer whales. Researchers at Monterrey Bay Aquarium and several partner organizations looked at patterns in the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary off San Francisco, a
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IF THE IDEA OF MEETING UP WITH SEA SNAKES ON A DIVE UNSETTLES YOU, here are two important facts about sea snakes and sea kraits: 1) They’re armed with highly deadly venom, and 2) They’re remarkably unaggressive. That being said, here’s another important thing about these two groups of sea snakes: Don’t mess with them. All sea snakes are venomous snake-like reptiles, but in anatomy and lifestyle, there are two different kinds. So, what’s the
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AS OCEAN-DWELLING, AIR-BREATHING REPTILES, SEA SNAKES NEED TO RETURN TO THE SURFACE periodically to take in air, a factor that makes them largely shallow-water animals common to reefs and river estuaries in the Indo-Pacific basin. So it was a reptilian phenomenon when two sea snakes were spotted at depths of some 800 feet/240 meters off the coast of northern Australia, as reported recently in the journal Austral Ecology. That places them in the mesopelagic zone,
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LINKS TO INTERESTING STUFF ON THE WEB – CETACEAN EDITION “Seven North Atlantic Right Whale Calves Spotted So Far This Year,” The Scientist The number is still too low to be sustainable, but last year it was zero, so it’s promising. “Beaked Whales Are the Deepest Divers,” New York Times Not that much is known about them, but they dive deeper and can stay longer than any other marine mammal. “Migrating blue whales rely on
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OFF THE COAST OF CANADA’S VANCOUVER ISLAND, HUMPBACK WHALES have developed a new, low-energy approach to collecting their daily 2,500 kg of delectable edibles like herring. Kicking back and remaining stationary, these humpbacks let seabirds bring the prey to them. The scientists who have documented the new behavior have termed it “trap-feeding,” after the plant world’s Venus fly traps. CONVENTIONAL FEEDING TECHNIQUES Humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae) are baleen whales – that is, they earn their livings by
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