I spent the afternoon with a turtle researcher that is doing an assessment of the number of turtles on Midway. Midway is not an important nesting area for Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles and the researcher I spent time with believes it won't be in the future either because the areas around Midway don't provide much of the feeding habitat that the turtles prefer. They tag turtles with " pit tags" that are much like the chips that are implanted in dogs and cats for identification. One of the turtles we saw this afternoon had been first tagged in 1977 and they guessed it was at least 25 years old at that time based on its size and maturity. It is now about 40 inches long and has an estimated weight of more than 300 pounds. An interesting afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment