Turtles don't know where they're going when they migrate

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-05-11 09:01

Australia; International; VIC

Photo by Olga Tsai on Unsplash

When hawksbill turtles migrate across the oceans they don't really know where they're going, according to Australian and international researchers. The team used GPS tracking data to understand how these turtles are able to navigate long distances to find small, remote islands. Looking at the distance they travelled, the researchers say it's mostly by swimming in circles until they find somewhere to stop, for example one turtle travelled 1306 kilometres to find an island just 176 kilometres away.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Travel routes to remote ocean targets reveal the map sense resolution for a marine migrant

Journal of the Royal Society Interface

How animals navigate across the ocean to isolated targets remains perplexing >150 years since this question was considered by Charles Darwin. We used high-resolution Fastloc-GPS tracking for post-breeding hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) to show individuals often followed circuitous paths when migrating short distances, which provides compelling evidence that they only have a relatively crude map sense in the open ocean.

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Journal/
conference: Journal of the Royal Society Interface

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Deakin University

Funder: This work was supported by the Bertarelli Foundation as part of the Bertarelli Programme in Marine Science (grant no. BPMS-2017-4).

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