Where to?

Most turtles are thousands of kilometers south of where we initially satellite tagged them by now. Christie is an excellent example of this. She is the classic post-foraging (feeding) season “Canadian” leatherback.

Asha and Beverly, on the other hand, are a different story. These tracks are anomalous. Asha actually recently briefly popped back into Canadian waters! She’s just about 500 kilometres from where we tagged her at the start of August.

“It’s not behaviour we’ve ever previously observed in leatherbacks that have just finished a foraging season in continental shelf waters off Atlantic Canada,” said Canadian sea turtle expert Dr. Mike James. “What we’ve observed with these two turtles is more akin to what has been observed for turtles departing nesting beaches in the western Atlantic.”

If you click here and also here, you will find the tracks of leatherback turtles that were satellite tagged on nesting beaches in South America and the Caribbean. Some of them travelled through the same area Beverly is in.

“Asha and Beverly are effectively staying at high latitudes, at least for now. But although these are northern waters, they are not cold because they are under the influence of the warm Gulf Stream current,” Mike continued. “The edge of that current represents a dynamic, productive environment where the turtles are clearly finding prey. It’s possible the turtles may even over-winter at high latitudes within the influence of the northern edge of the Gulf Stream; however, at this point, it’s really too early to tell. Either turtle would still have plenty of time to head down to Trinidad or one of the other nesting colonies and nest this season.”

I wish you could hear the precise note in Mike’s voice as he talked—a combination of “Hmm, why doesn’t this fit the pattern?” and the exciting, “Hey! This doesn’t fit the pattern!” crossed with a dose of extreme, infectious curiosity.