seaturtlebrie

Absolutely! Basically, my master's work involved measuring a specific protein that reproductively active female sea turtles make in order to provide a nutrient source for her babies in the egg yolk. Females are thought to begin producing this protein 8 months or so prior to the reproductive season, so it has the potential to be useful as a predictor of an upcoming nesting season.

More technical: The protein that we are measuring is an egg-yolk precursor protein that represents an essential source of oviparous vertebrate maternal investment. Sea turtles do not provide parental care for their offspring, so this represents an essential way in which a female contributes to the success for her offspring during their first few days of life, including the "frenzied" run down the beach and out to open sea. What I was able to show in my recent study, "Ovarian Dynamics in Free-Ranging Loggerhead Sea Turtles" (In Press), was that females that had no signs of ovarian activity (via gonadal ultrasonography) did not produce this protein within detection limits, but females that had active ovaries had very high concentrations circulating in the blood. This is a new finding which needs further testing but we are hopeful that it will provide a new technology to physiologists, ecologists and conservation biologists seeking to know more about the populations of turtles in their water! Stay tuned for the publication in Copeia!

Actually, males and females mate in the water several weeks prior to the nesting season and the females hang out near the nesting beaches until ovulation, fertilization of the eggs. All this happens before the eggs are shelled and then laid. Females are also able to store sperm and mate with many males, resulting in multiple paternity within a given nest. About female sea turtle reproduction, I would say it's tragically beautiful, because it's a unique reproductive strategy among reptiles to lay 100+ eggs in a few short months, and the females metabolize their fat stores and extract calcium from their own bones in order to produce these eggs.

As turtles go through their life cycle they have different ecological roles. When they're eggs incubating on the beach they are a critically important food source for a number of predators both on land and in the water, so in that way they are considered keystone as a food source. As they age, they can provide important roles to corals (Hawksbill sea turtles manage sponge populations in the tropics to allow for healthy coral growth). They also are important for managing jellyfish populations, as leatherback sea turtles have specialized cartilaginous esophageal protection to allow them to eat LITERS of jellyfish a day without being stung! (Photo: http://www.seaturtle.org/glossary/images/152.jpg).

For me, the most amazing thing about sea turtles is their ability to survive. I have worked in several sea turtle hospitals during my undergrad and graduate career and they are tanks. Sea turtles are frequently hit by boats, I even worked with one that had its shell shattered to the point of needing 11 bars to piece it back together like humpty dumpty. It's amazing what they can do in a rehab setting, but even more amazing is that I've seen wild turtles surviving and reproducing while missing limbs, showing horrific boat scars from propellers cutting into the body cavity through the shell (which is fused to the ribs and spine). Read more about one turtle here: http://briemyre.blogspot.com/2014/06/she-survived-loggerheads-story.html. Read also about a leatherback hatchling that survived a vicious raccoon attack: http://briemyre.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-first-leatherback-and-one-nests-story.html. They have survived 120 million years of evolution, largely unchanged, until they have declined over the past century due to a variety of factors.

One amazing success story is that of the conservation efforts for the green turtle in Florida, which has been making record numbers in the past 10 years, is now showing positive signs toward recovery.

I'm actually preparing to leave for Costa Rica in about 10 days to start sampling for my PhD project. I am super excited to practice my Spanish! I am actually teaming up with Chris Figgener, who's video you referred to, we are doing a big collaborative study where she will be doing genetics and migration studies on the same turtles that I am doing a variety of endocrine tests on to learn more about how females physiologically prepare to lay so many eggs while also having to compensate for a costly migration to breeding grounds. I am also doing ultrasonography and attempting to track fat metabolism. The ultimate goals are to develop useful tests for recent feeding, this will be a valuable tool to non-invasively find out if a turtle has recently eaten. To learn more, check out my blog www.briemyre.blogspot.com and my video on my go fund me page: www.gofundme.com/seaturtlebrie. Happy to take more questions on the topic if you're interested!

Five species, including the species that's smallest and most endangered in the world, the Kemp's ridley sea turtle. We also have the loggerhead, green, leatherback and hawksbill.