Endangered Sea Turtle Migration May Be Linked to Ocean Warming Events
(CN) — Sporadic ocean warming events may be the key to understanding the travels of endangered sea turtles, a Stanford research group said Thursday.
In a study published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, a team at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and other institutions detailed its new study into the obscure migration patterns of the North Pacific loggerhead turtle.
“The North Pacific Loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) undergoes one of the greatest of all animal migrations, nesting exclusively in Japan and re-emerging several years later along important foraging grounds in the eastern North Pacific,” the article said.
Young loggerheads leave Japan to find food, usually hanging around in the Central North Pacific.
Some, however, make it all the way across the ocean to the Baja California peninsula in Mexico. According to the researchers, over 43,000 congregate there and stay for up to 20 years.
Eventually the loggerheads return to Japan to reproduce and live out the remainder of their years.
https://www.courthousenews.com/endangered-sea-turtle-migration-may-be-linked-to-ocean-warming-events/