Sea turtles, they've existed for so long.
It's important for me to do my part to make sure that I leave this
world in a better place than how I came into it.
Welcome to My Place on Earth, the series where I'll be meeting nature enthusiasts from
around the world who want to share the amazing wildlife on their doorsteps.
In this episode, we're joined by a fantastic conservationist who's based in
Kefalonia in Greece, and she's here to talk to us all about loggerhead
sea turtles, it is Chanel from wildlife centre.
Hello, Chanel.
Hello, Hannah.
Hello, my love. How are you?
We're great.
It's a beautiful, sunny day and we're happy to be here.
It looks lovely where you are, we are in grey old England, so
very jealous of you right now.
So listen, tell us a few interesting things
about loggerhead sea turtles, because they've got fascinating life histories, haven't
they?
Yes,
they do. Well, sea turtles, they have a really thick shell and the top part is called a
carapace. So I've actually brought part of a skeleton here and we can see this is the top
part of the shell part of it, and what's interesting is that the ribs are actually fused
to the shell. So these are actually the ribs here and that makes them susceptible to
anything that could encounter them. Evolutionary speaking, it's very, very nice it's a
hard shell of armour and now with humans, things can be a little bit more difficult for
them with these shells.
Another thing about sea turtles is that they have quite a long lifespan, around 60 to 80
years, but it takes them fifteen to twenty five years to become sexually mature. That's a
really, really long time for a hatchling and a juvenile turtle to survive out in the wild.
Sea turtles heavily rely on temperature, whether it's an adult or it's an embryo. These
females, as they're in their winter foraging grounds, they rely on the temperature of the
sea to alert them that it's time to come back to these beaches here to mate, hatchlings
also use this as a cue as to whether to come out of their egg chamber so they wait for it
to cool and that's how they know that it's time to come out at night time. The embryos as
they're developing so around day 27, the sex of that embryo will be determined and if
it's above twenty nine degrees celsius, it will be a female and below will be a male.
So
what's your breeding season have been like out there this year, this spring and summer?
Are you finding more males or more females? I mean, what's it like there?
Well in breeding season we have a large influx of both
sexes, males and females will come to the harbour.
They will be mating there and it's really awesome because the harbour
allows us to see this mating.
This is something that's very difficult to capture on camera, especially when you're out
to sea looking for these mating males and females.
So the harbour allows us to catch these interactions and these females
will mate with multiple males and they will hold onto this sperm throughout their
whole nesting season.
Well,
it's fantastic footage, I can't say I've ever seen any sea turtles mating before it's
quite a thing to watch, isn't it?
Yeah,
it is. It's really interesting to know a turtle too to see Barb or Artemis and to see
which males she's going to mate with this next year.
And
talking of nesting season, I do believe you have a nest there for us live.
Yes,
we do. So sea turtles typically lay three to six nests per a season and each nest can
have up to five different fathers in it. So because that females mating with multiple
males, there are multiple paternity within these nests. So we have a nest right here and
we're doing an inventory today, so this is what we do seven days after the nest hatches
and we are freeing trapped hatchlings. So these eggs are not viable anymore, we have
these little hatchlings here.
Oh.
Oh, my goodness. Oh, Chanel, look at them. Sorry, how many days old did you say these
hatchlings were? What's
really interesting about these hatchlings is that a nest typically incubates for up to
around fifty five days but this nest in particular is eighty four days old. That's a very
long time and that's because this nest had been washed by water, it was inundated by a
medic aid.
And you're going to release them later on today, aren't you?
Yes, we'll be releasing them shortly.
Oh,
my goodness and these tiny hatchlings, they will well for the first one to three years of
their lives I think they spend out on the open ocean, don't they? And they can run into a
multitude of threats when they're out there in plastic pollution is a massive, massive
issue for them, isn't it?
Plastic
pollution is a huge issue for us here in the Mediterranean. Sea turtles can get entangled
in it, they can ingest it as well. The females, as they come up to nest on the beach, the
plastics can get in the way as well. So there's a lot of different places that they are
encountering these plastic. Another threat is hooks and sea turtles can either ingest
these hooks so we can see an x-ray of a turtle here where the hook is actually in the
intestinal tract of the turtle. It's made it, it's swallowed it, and it's made it all the
way to the intestines. The hooks can also get entangled on their squint, their skin and
their flippers. They can get entangled or entrapped in nets, so sea turtles can hold
their breath for up to four hours in the water but when they're entrapped in a net,
that's very, very difficult while they're fighting to hold their breath for that long.
And
we were talking a bit before, now you were saying that the turtles, they're not leaving
the harbour, is that right?
There
are a few sea turtles that do not leave the harbour during the wintertime and they are so
reliant upon the fishing boats that are there and the scraps that are being thrown over
the fish, uh sorry thrown over the net as scrap that they have. This has been a major
part of their daily diet, so we can see two sea turtles here that are fighting over the
scraps that are being thrown. And for two sea turtles to fight like this, they're
typically solitary creatures. So what we're creating is an environment where sea turtles
are interacting on a daily basis and in an antagonistic way.
So,
listen, how did you get into all of this conservation work and end up where you are?
I'm actually half Greek, so I'm from Kefalonia, my father's from
Kefalonia and that's what also helped me choose to study sea turtles.
Being here with the turtles makes me feel like I am playing a
part in something that's really, really important to me, really close to my heart
and sea turtles, they've existed for so long.
and it's important for me to do my part to
make sure that I leave this world in a better place than how I
came into it and I think each one of us can really,
we can all do our own part.
So this is my little part to make sure that sea turtles, as threatened as they
are, can make it out of this difficult climate.
Well,
listen, thank you so much for joining us Chanel today. We really appreciate it and you're
going to be releasing those hatchlings into the ocean just after this, aren't you?
Yes, we are.
We're very excited, and I know that they are as well.
Well,
listen, thank you so much and keep up the fantastic work. We really appreciate it. Thank
you.
Thank you for having us.
We're very happy to share this with you.
Thanks bye Chanel.
Bye.
What a fantastic species and lady but that's all we've got time for this week and join me
again when I'll be speaking to another wildlife enthusiast from somewhere around the
world and if you have a special place, whether you're a scientist, a wildlife filmmaker,
a conservationist, we would love to hear from you and you can get in touch with us by
commenting below. I will see you next time.