For the first time ever, scientists are now able to track the so called "lost years" of infant turtles thanks to tiny satellite tags.
The tags help scientists track month-old turtles during their uncertain period once they leave U.S. coastal waters and head out into the wider Atlantic Ocean, according to a recently published study.
Newly released data indicates that loggerheads spend a lot of time in the Sargasso Sea, and live among the floating mats of sargassum seaweed.
"This has been a fun study because the data suggest the turtles are doing something a little bit unexpected to what everyone had assumed over the past few decades, and it boils down to having the right technology to be able to follow the animals," said lead author Dr. Kate Mansfield from University of Central Florida, Orlando, according to the study.
Observations were published in the journal Proceedings of The Royal Society.
After leaving their nests, infant turtles, also known as neonates, run toward the water before heading out to sea.
What they do after this has been a mystery for quite some time.
The common belief is that they traveled in a huge circle within the currents of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre, eventually reaching the Azores and Cape Verde, before swimming back to the Gulf of Mexico and Florida.
Attaching tags to turtles that are just a few months old seems to be the biggest issue, according to the study. Thanks to flexible mounts and preparation techniques usually used in a manicurist's salon, Mansfield and her team got the tags to stay on the animals' shells for approximately 220 days.
"Before this study, most of the scientific information about the early life history of sea turtles was inferred through genetics studies, opportunistic sightings offshore, or laboratory-based studies," says Mansfield. "With real observations of turtles in their natural environment, we are able to examine and reevaluate existing hypotheses about the turtles' early life history."
With this new data, scientists can now see that the young turtles drop out of the gyre's predominant currents into the middle of the Atlantic, or what is commonly referred to as the Sargasso Sea.
The tags also showed that most loggerheads mostly stayed at the sea surface, which could be seen in the temperature recordings as well. The study showed that these readings were a bit higher than previously expected.
Atlantic loggerheads are classified as endangered, an issue that is concerning considering they take a while to reach sexual maturity, which takes 25 years or more, according to the study.
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