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solonavi 22 April 2007 Campaign, Endangered & Extinction, Habitat 115 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

CI

greatturtlerace.com

Every year after nesting in Costa Rica, female leatherback turtles swim more than 930 miles to the Galapagos Islands in search of food. This year, from April 16 to 29, Conservation International (CI) TOPP (Tagging of Pacific Predators), The Leatherback Trust, and MINAE (a department of the Republic of Costa Rica) are using custom-made satellite backpacks to track eleven turtles as they make their way across the Pacific to see which will travel the farthest in a 14-day, 500-mile “race” along their migratory route.

Click on the link below for their daily update;

http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/greatturtlerace/index.php

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Description

The leatherback is the largest living turtle and is so distinctive that it is placed in its own separate family, Dermochelys.

All other sea turtles have bony hard plates on their shells. The leatherback’s carapace is slightly flexible and has a rubbery texture. No sharp angle is formed between the carapace and the under-belly so a leatherback is somewhat barrel-shaped. Many can grow to be bigger than one too.

The front flippers of a leatherback are longer than in the other marine turtles, even when you take the leatherback’s size into account. They can reach 270 cm in adult leatherbacks.

The largest leatherback on record was a male stranded on the West Coast of Wales in 1988. He weighed 916 kg.

Leatherback hatchlings look mostly black when you are glancing down on them, and their flippers are margined in white. Rows of white scales give hatchling leatherbacks the white striping that runs down the length of their backs.

While the Recovery Plan (being a scientific document) makes no mention of this, Turtle Trax would be remiss not to mention it here: hatchling leatherbacks are cute and engaging little animals.

Of considerable interest is that the core body temperature of adults in cold water has been shown to be several degrees Centigrade above the surrounding water. This allows leatherbacks to prosper in ocean regions where other marine reptiles cannot. Fellow Canadian Michael James of Dalhousie University has been training fishermen in eastern Canada to spot leatherbacks, resulting in numerous sightings and an increased awareness that sea turtles inhabit Canadian waters too.

In 1982, Peter Pritchard estimated that 115,000 adult female leatherbacks existed worldwide and that roughly half of them probably were nesting in western Mexico. In recent years, however, the number of nesting leatherbacks has been in an alarming decline.