Decoy sea turtle eggs are used to catch poachers. Turtle Island Restoration Network October 24, Turtle Island Restoration Network October 14, Turtle Island Restoration Network September 30, Most eggs went unpoached, and the trackers were later retrieved by scientists. Of the nests containing decoy eggs, a quarter were illegally harvested. Some of the eggs failed to connect to a GPS signal, while other eggs were spotted by poachers and tossed aside.
Five of those poached eggs gave the team useful tracking data. Two of the InvestEGGators moved slightly more than a mile, to local bars or private residences. The longest voyage was around 85 miles, which Pheasey recalls watching on her phone over the course of two days. First, Pheasey saw the egg stop behind a grocery store. SWOT says hawksbills in the Eastern Pacific are "probably the most endangered sea turtle population in the world.
Hawksbill turtle -- Named for its sharp beak, the hawksbill is the only marine consumer with a diet predominately made up of reef sponges, according to SWOT. Hatchlings weigh a mere five grams, while fully-grown adults can weigh up to kilograms. Kemp's ridley turtle -- Last assessed by the IUCN in , the Kemp's ridley is critically endangered, with just over 22, adults thought to be in existence. It nearly went extinct 50 years ago according to SWOT , which says the species has shown signs of recovery despite myriad threats.
Kemp's ridley turtle -- The Kemp's ridley is known for its limited range. It spends most of its time around the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and eastern coast of the US, although it has been found across the North Atlantic. Kemp's ridley turtle -- It's the smallest sea turtle , growing up to 70cm and 60 kilograms, and taking years to reach sexual maturity. Along with olive ridleys, it is the only sea turtle to exhibit mass nesting. Flatback turtle -- Flatback turtles have only existed since -- that is, according to science.
Once considered a type of green turtle, they were formally described as a separate species in the late '80s. Flatback turtle -- Flatback turtles nest only along Australia's northern coast and live in the ocean between Australia, Papua New Guinea and southern Indonesia.
They can stay active underwater longer than most other sea turtles. Flatback turtle -- SWOT says because its nesting range coincides with the territory of saltwater crocodiles -- which are known to attack humans -- there are " virtually no underwater photos of adults taken in the wild. The dot was tracking the journey of a fake turtle egg, which Pheasey had planted deep within a real turtle nest the day before. The egg was poached and trafficked to a supermarket loading bay kilometers 85 miles away, where it was probably sold.
Scientists used a 3D-printer to develop the decoy eggs. Dubbed an "InvestEGGator," the fake turtle egg -- roughly the size of a ping pong ball -- was developed by scientists at US-based conservation organization Paso Pacifico, which focuses on protecting coastal ecosystems in Central America.
Read More. And rising temperatures make for hotter sand, which is a twofold problem for the turtles: It can get so hot that the developing young perish, and because the sex of a turtle is determined by temperature at which it develops hotter for females, cooler for males , the sex ratios of populations are shifting.
Also, habitat destruction means less space to lay their eggs. Which means disease transfer is a lot easier. It means that they're a lot more susceptible to things like mammalian predation, because they find one nest, they find them all. That goes for mammalian predators like human poachers, too. Unfortunately, the Covid pandemic has made that all the worse, as eco-tourism economies have ground to a halt. But the beauty of InvestEGGator, says Parrish, is its cost-effectiveness: a cheap transmitter wrapped in a 3D-printed shell.
That means cash-strapped biologists and conservationists can deploy them at the scale required to parse the egg poaching problem—they have to monitor many, many nests up and down a coast to get a complete picture of where the eggs are being smuggled.
0コメント