Hi everyone welcome to tonight's webinar my name is Lisa Uttal and I work for Monterey Bay National
Marine Sanctuary. Just a few logistics before we get started, during the presentation all attendees
will be in listen only mode. You're encouraged to type your questions for the presenters into the
question box in the bottom of the control panel on the right side of your screen.
This is the same area you can let us know about any technical problems that you may be
experiencing. My colleague Chelsea Prindle will be monitoring incoming questions and technical
issues and will respond to them as soon as she can just so you know we are recording this session
and we'll share this recording with all registered participants via email after this webinar.
Tonight I'm going to start out with a short introduction to our sanctuaries and then our
program will go for approximately 35 minutes and then we will wrap up with my favorite part of
the webinar, where you get to ask questions of us and we can have a great discussion.
It's my pleasure to introduce Scott Benson and the company Tanzle who I've had the opportunity to
work with over the last several months, even years to bring you this incredible immersive experience.
Scott Benson is stationed at Moss Landing Marine Labs in Moss Landing,
California. He is the lead investigator of the leatherback turtle ecology program at
NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center and he coordinates studies of the distribution abundance
and movement patterns and foraging ecology and health of endangered western Pacific
leatherback turtles along the U.S. west coast and throughout the Pacific. His research
integrates biotelemetry, aerial surveys, vessel-based sampling, and satellite remote
sensing to enhance our understanding of how oceanographic processes influence the occurrence
and behavior of this species and to aid U.S. and international conservation and recovery efforts
since 1986. Scott has been involved in ecological research and conservation of marine vertebrates
in the Pacific ocean, including integrated studies of marine mammals and seabirds along the U.S. west
coast. His education includes a B.A from San Diego State University and an M.S. in marine
science from San Jose State University. Scott thank you for joining us tonight.
Pleasure to be with you. I'm coming to you from Half Moon Bay with and am joined by my colleagues
from Upwell, a non-profit in Monterey and my friends at Moss Landing Marine Labs. We are up
here to begin sampling leatherbacks this year, the first time we've tried to do so since that
pandemic started, so we're very excited to be up. Excellent, so right from the field that's great.
Our aerial team managed to find two turtles today so we're we're pretty excited about tomorrow.
Great this is real time excellent. I'd like to introduce Ed Gregor and Stacy Martin who are
the geniuses behind this immersive experience that you're going to see today and the company
Tanzle. There's a whole suite of amazing people who have helped us put together this
experience. Tanzle's mission is to solve issues around the human challenges of
understanding and sharing insights with big data. They are developing an innovative data
management and visualization system that enables collaborative analysis research and presentation,
bringing a whole new level of intuition to data analysis. Founded by entrepreneurs Nancy Clemens
and Mike Vesely, they have more than 30 years of developing 3d hardware and software in Silicon
Valley. So Ed and Stacy will be on hand tonight to answer any questions. Thank you Tanzle for
being here and thank you for this wonderful experience that we're going to show everyone.
All right, I'd like to introduce the national marine sanctuary system briefly. Our system
serves as the trustee of a network of underwater parks encompassing more than six hundred thousand
square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters. We span from Washington State to the Florida
Keys and from Lake Huron to American Samoa. The network includes 15 national marine sanctuaries
and Papahānaumokuākea and Rose Atoll Marine National Monuments. There are five sanctuaries
here on our west coast. You can see in the north here, the Olympic Coast moving down south to the
Greater Farallones, Cordell Bank, Monterey Bay and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.
We have here on the west coast some of the most biodiverse areas in the world. These sanctuaries
are connected by....Something in common that they have is the California current. This
long meandering current that moves along the coast at different levels during different times a year.
Because of this cold California current and because of upwelling regions on our coast,
this brings rich nutrient waters to our coast and therefore productive waters,
which attracts so many of the charismatic megafauna, one of which we're going to spend
our time today talking about and focusing on the leatherback sea turtle. Zooming in closer to home
a lot of you may be familiar with Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. It is one of the most
biodiverse ecosystems in the world and I feel fortunate to say that I get to be here.
We, our sanctuary team does research, we do education and we do resource protection,
which really all results in ecosystem protection and I get the opportunity to share these science
stories with you and the public and it's what I call science-based stewardship
I don't know if everyone knows but tomorrow October 15th is California Leatherback
Day, so the leatherback turtle is actually California's state marine reptile, so it's very
fitting that tonight that we are taking this time to really jump in, learn about this leatherback,
Scott's up on the coast, they've already seen two leatherbacks today and he's just starting
out his research time on the water, that we honor and celebrate the leatherback turtle.
So let's get started, we're going to go ahead and take a little journey with the leatherback turtle
Hi my name is Andrew and I'm on the edge of the spectacular Monterey Bay. We're asking
people that visit this area from around the world what they know about sea turtles. Sea
turtles, sea turtles, leatherback turtles?
Get a load of some of these answers. I would think Australia and Hawaii
more like tropical places. I've never seen turtles around here It doesn't like the cold
water. I don't think very much about the sea turtles, south of Mexico, San Diego,
warmer waters they're different animals they can survive in different temperatures.
I think I believe they swim in the ocean maybe in ocean currents and they come up to spawn on
the beach. I believe they nest on beaches. They just crack and hatch and then the little turtles
just say hey head to the ocean, head to the ocean because that's where we need to be next.
A lot of them are kind of scared and don't know what to do. Also the baby turtles they
also get caught by the birds. And then they swim with their parents right if I'm not mistaken.
They eat vegetables, eat plankton, they eat seaweed
they eat shrimp too. If they're feeding on jellyfish there's lots out there for plenty.
Other turtles probably eat other baby turtles just because they're a food source. I think the
french eat lots of turtles. Humans eat them in different cultures. Who would eat turtle soup,
I don't know that'd be horrible think anyone would really. I think they're protected so we
can't technically can't eat them or capture them you know the United States technically can't do
it, I know other countries probably do they they take the eggs do they i don't know i don't know.
Is it the big big one, the huge one some of them must be what a meter across that big uh-huh.
What I know from finding Nemo, they get to be good size.
Oh my god really that's a leather back!
Wow whoa big!
See it looks like a dinosaur. Where was that? I think it was caught here,
but it's more southern hemisphere, warmer waters it doesn't like the cold water.
Really 800 kilograms yes very big. It's large it's probably quite old I would guess. That's amazing
and that's out there there yeah that's fantastic. Gigantic too!
I picture them kicking with both legs coordinated.
It's almost like a breaststroke.
Just protect them as best we can. And I would definitely do
anything in the future to make them less endangered
Hi I'm here with Scott Benson, a leatherback turtle scientist. He works for NOAA Fisheries and
he's been studying these turtles for over 20 years here in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary,
but also throughout the Pacific ocean-- oh look, here's this leatherback.
The star of the show right. You can see this how this animal is just perfectly
designed for a life in the marine environment. So this is it, the magnificent leatherback turtle,
a swimming and diving machine. You can see that it's perfectly suited for aquatic life.
That carapace, the shell is not hard, it's actually soft, so if I scratch it with my
fingertip it would bleed a little bit. But look at that shape this is Mercury's turtle
you know Mercury carried a loot and you can see this carapace, this shell looks like a loot
it's teardrop shaped. It's got those longitudinal ridges that enhance the hydrodynamic aspects of
this animal so they can move effortlessly through the water. Those huge flippers in the front,
that's what propels this animal all the way across the Pacific ocean. It's a very strong animal.
I've actually had I've actually been lifted off the deck of the boat by one of these flippers.
Unfortunately it's a gentle giant it doesn't bite but it can-- heck of a wrestler that's for sure
when it's on a boat. Now it doesn't doesn't move very well on land, it's very heavy
these animals as adults about five to six feet long can weigh over a thousand pounds. So on land,
they look pretty clumsy and they labor immensely the females labor immensely when
they're crawling up on the beach to lay eggs, but put them in the water and they're really
few animals that can match the abilities of the leatherback turtle in the water.
This migration that it does from nesting beaches over in the western Pacific
to these distant foraging grounds here on the west coast of the United States, five to six thousand
miles, it's one of the longest greatest migrations of any aquatic air breathing vertebrate. There are
some birds that will go further, there are some fishes that will go might go a little further but
bird gets to fly and the fish doesn't have to come up for air. This animal is essentially
pushing water across the Pacific ocean. You see these giant flippers that's the motor this is a
swimming and diving machine. It's those flippers and this design that let this animal essentially
move effortlessly through the water even though it might be migrating five six thousand miles to
get her. It can do so effortlessly. How fast can a turtle like this move? Well they can they could
do some short bursts of speed, you know maybe 20 miles an hour or something for trying to catch
them sometimes, but in general they're usually moving slower maybe do like 50 miles in a day,
That's pretty good, it's fast for a turtle. We always think about turtles being really
slow on land. Well on land and this one too this animal when it gets out on land
it's like a turtle out of water excuse me. The females have to come up on the beaches to lay eggs
and boy they really have to work hard for that and they, they're just not very suited for moving
around on land. Because they weigh a lot? They weigh a lot exactly. What's the largest turtle
you know of? Well I know that there's been some seen over in the Atlantic ocean that may be way up
as much as 2 000 pounds, but here in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, we've actually caught
live animals that weigh up to 1300 pounds, so very large, so but again in the water it's doing very.
They're buoyant. They're just tremendous swimmers. They must have use a lot of energy to stay in the
water. They don't have to use as much energy when they're in the water. Again this design
is such that it is perfectly suited for life in the marine world. I'm noticing here if you look
at the head of the turtle, what is that pink spot. That's what it's called, the pink spot
and that is the part of the skull that is actually the thinnest and beneath that pink spot is the
pineal gland and the pineal gland is sensitive to light so this pink spot is essentially the
turtle's window on the world. Pineal gland is able to provide information about day length,
for example, we've got leatherbacks showing up here in on the west coast of United States
from about 4th of July or so and they stay into the late fall and as those days get shorter
in October and November, that pineal gland is sending a signal for the animal it's time to leave
and they don't stay here in on our coast the entire year they are here seasonally. So
by late November they're usually moving away, they'll spend their winter maybe in the tropics
if they don't go all the way back to the beach and then they'll come back again following something.
Can we take a closer look at that pineal gland? I think with the some of the magic we've got here.
Leatherback turtles like most reptiles have a pretty small brain maybe about the size of a
grape, however this pineal gland is significantly larger. As I mentioned before it is a means for
which the animal can keep track of day length. It's also probably helps as a navigational aid
during migration as well and you can see that right there that that brown that piece of brown
on the skull there, that's the pineal gland. You said their brain is the size of grape,
are they smart? Do they have personalities? I can't say anything about smart although actually
I've seen a few things that makes me think that they're not stupid. For example, sometimes when
we try to capture them, they'll just stay abreast of us the entire time and not let us approach
from the back and so it knows where we are and we catch these animals and put transmitters on
some of them. We do health assessments. Some of the creatures are very difficult to to work with,
put up a tremendous resistance and others are very easy. So, I would say there are personalities,
despite the fact they have a small brain. they're they are different each one is an individual.
Scott I'm looking at this skeleton and you know these guys are vertebrates they have a backbone
they're some of the oldest vertebrates that have been on earth. How long have they been around?
In this form here, they've been around for nearly 80 million years. They go back to time of
the dinosaurs, essentially so this is an ancient mariner. So it's kind of like a living dinosaur.
It is, it's like a living dinosaur, correct. Scott, you mentioned that they eat jellyfish.
Yes, they eat jellyfish. They eat all kinds of gelatinous zooplankton , so jellyfish and salps,
again poor calorie items and you we can tell that this is a
jellyfish or gelatinous zooplankton specialist when we look inside that mouth.
Now it looks pretty scary in there. You'll see just a moment.
There we go. Those are papillae, they're actually soft they're not, if i put my hand in there,
it won't get shredded like in a garbage disposal or something like that. But what those papillae do
are help that slippery slimy jellyfish move down the esophagus to the stomach.
As I mentioned, jellyfish are very poor calorie, oh look at that, that's incredible. Jellyfish
are poor calorie items to be consuming and this animal's doing this incredible migration. If you
eat enough jellyfish, it works and so leatherback turtles eat a tremendous amount of jellyfish every
day. Fortunately we have lots of jellyfish here in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary,
particularly the brown sea nettles and that's why this animal is coming here. The Monterey Bay
National Marine Sanctuary is highly productive. We get a lot of migration of organisms coming
year round at different times of the year. We have whales. We have turtles. We have all kinds
of things so these guys are just part of a larger migration because of that productivity that brings
jellies. That's correct, absolutely right and it's predictable. We have a seasonal aspect to
things over here and so the turtles, they show up in about early July, just about the time you
start seeing some of these jellies becoming more abundant, the jellies get larger as the
summer gets goes on, and so we end up peaking our leatherback abundance in late August or so. Scott
you said these guys travel a long long distance. Where are they coming from in the Pacific ocean?
The leatherbacks that come to the Monterey Bay National Sanctuary are part of the western pacific
meta population and this population nests in this area here. This is the island of New Guinea.
The western part of it is Indonesia, also known as West Papua, the eastern part is Papua New Guinea
and then over here under this cloud here are the islands of the Solomon Islands and so these are
the areas where the nesting beaches are located. So they're going all the way from there to?
They are going from here all the way across the Pacific
and eventually.... That's the west coast of California. As I mentioned, it's a meta
population so other members of this population are using forging grounds that are a little closer for
instance, over here in the south china sea in the Sulawesi sea and yet others are using just areas
out here in the middle of the north Pacific. The north Pacific transition zone, it's that
extension of the Kuroshio current. So you could find leatherbacks in a lot of different spots?
The nesting beaches are isolated in that area? The nesting beaches are what unify this population so
all this all this stuff here. I'll use a slightly different color. All this is the whole area for
the nesting beach right there so these areas and I will also mention that it's a meta population
unique to any of the leatherback populations in the world, this population nests twice in a year.
There is a summer nesting group and a winter nesting group. Now these are the areas that
are used by the summer nesting group, but the winter animals they leave these beaches and
they use regions down here in the south Pacific off New Zealand and Australia,
so you can see that this population is using lots of different parts of the Pacific ocean.
That's an incredibly long journey and as they're migrating, are they just swimming the whole time,
what do they do? Mostly they're just swimming the whole time. There is not a lot of
forging behavior that's going on. Now there may be some opportunistic bites along the way,
but pretty much they are moving all the way across the ocean or to one of these other place
to get their meal. Now how do you know this about these turtles? Are you are out there in a
boat chasing them? No I'm not in a boat chasing them, so we know this because, many years ago
I've traveled to these places looking for the origin of leatherbacks in California. We had some
evidence from molecular biology in this case mitochondrial DNA that animals that were found
stranded in California are likely linked to the western Pacific. We didn't know where exactly and
so I put transmitters on these animals at these different nesting beaches for nearly 10 years.
So these are satellite transmitters? Correct, these are satellite link transmitters right and
they provide essentially a position every day about where the animals located and that's how
we're able to figure out where all these different foraging grounds are. Many people often ask
well you know if you've got some animal that's all the way coming all the way over to California,
why do that there are other places to eat that are much closer and the reason is because these
nesting beaches do unify this population. This is the place they all have to go to at some point
and when the small turtles leave the beach, they're only about the size of a silver dollar.
They get moved by ocean currents primarily because they're not strong swimmers at that point
and they can be moved to any of these locations. And it turns out that there's a longshore current
along the coast the New Guinea, the New Guinea coastal current and it switches directions
with the monsoon. So part of the year that current moves westward part of the other part of the year
it moves eastward.These animals don't necessarily know about these other foraging grounds.
Once an animal identifies the west coast the United States as its foraging ground
that's the place it's going to return to it shows fidelity to that foraging room just like
they show fidelity to these nesting beaches So that is a journey across the whole pacific ocean.
How many miles will a turtle swim, do your satellite tags tell you that they swim
on this journey just to eat jellyfish? That that's about five to six thousand miles is the trip.
So the animals that actually do this trip from the nesting beach to the west coast United States
is going to take them about 11 to 12 months to make that journey.
I would assume along the way it's not just an easy trip? Now the dangers that do occur along the way
are primarily anthropogenic. So the chief danger to these animals during this trip
is being caught in fishing gear. Now most folks aren't trying to catch leatherback turtles.
They're not that good to eat? Well some people eat them, but there's a few people. There's
some islands off Indonesia that where people have been hunting leatherbacks for some time. Generally
the problem is that they get caught in fishing gear that's intended for other items. For example
swordfish, long lines that are used to catch swordfish often snag leatherback turtles and
if you look at this space right this incredible distance. All people don't have the same kind of
mindset with regards to how to use marine resources or how to protect them. We have the
Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary which is a place. It has 6 000 square miles of protected area
that have different regulations. I can imagine that a turtle traveling across the ocean
doesn't know those boundaries? Yes you're right so the turtle doesn't know any of these boundaries.
If we were to look at this and from an aspect of the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of the various
nations across the Pacific, you'd see all these little jigsaw puzzle looking pieces, bits and
pieces here and there. The leatherback isn't aware of those kind of political boundaries whatsoever.
It turns out that the west coast of the united states is probably the safest place in this entire
ocean for this animal to occur, because we do have these kinds of laws and regulations to help
conserve or protect these animals. For instance like the Endangered Species Act or the Marine
Mammal Protection act. Those instruments are not common currency across the ocean,
so if we're going conserve leatherback turtles, we all have to be in this together.
We can't just have the west coast United States be a safe place and nothing else because
the animal's not going to stay there. It's only going to be here for part of the year and then
it's going to be out here in this great expanse here whether it's in waters of other nations or
it's in what we call the international high seas which doesn't really belong to anybody. Wow
so you as you know Scott, the pacific ocean is huge. In fact if you were to take away the bottom
and the top and look at that three-dimensional space, this is the largest habitat on earth,
the pelagic environment. So many marine mammals come to Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
and they come at different times a year and travel through. Do these turtles on their
trans-pacific migration taking advantage of this huge habitat that has lots of
animals? Yes absolutely, the leatherback is one of the greatest divers out there, bar anything.
They can get down they can dive down to incredible depths of a thousand meters.
What you see right here is what we call a v-shaped dive. This is the kind of dive that occurs quite
a bit as it moves across the pacific as it is going down and back up. I mentioned before that
the leatherback is what we call a mesotherm, so it's not endothermic, it's not ectothermic
but it is actually able to adjust its temperature and it does this with by diving. So this v-shaped
dive here that you see that goes down to about 200 meters here. The function of this kind of a dive
is for this animal to get down in some cold water to cool itself off. Remarkably the leatherback is
most at risk of overheating so this this dive right here, this v-shaped dive allows this animal
to cool off. Leatherback has the greatest range of any of the sea turtles and part of that is
attributable to this fact that it can change its dive shapes as you see here this v dive. How deep
is it going here at the bottom of its dive? In this case here, this one's going down to about
200 meters. So 200 meters is its steepest depth that you've recorded? No, the deepest depth we've
ever recorded is over a thousand meters. Wow, These dives that go down to a thousand meters,
I can't really tell you what the purpose of those dives are they don't occur very often, they're
fairly rare but maybe it's predator avoidance. I don't know. But this kind of a dive here down to
200 meters is more common and it occurs often in the deeper waters off the shelf obviously
from where we are right now and its function is to again have this animal get to some cool water. For
example, I mentioned that one of the foraging areas that they use is in the south China Sea.
Well that's very tropical it's very warm there and so you have to get down to some depth in
order to find some cool water. That shell is soft, so there is huge pressure as you move down
into the ocean, there is just a huge amount of pressure weighing down on these organisms, so
having a soft shell is also adaptive to being able to dive deep correct? Yes, that shell can compress
and we don't know if they're feeding at those deep depths. We don't think that they're feeding,
it doesn't look like it now. There's another type of dive that is associated with foraging
it's called the the wiggle or the W dive-- we can see a image of what that looks like. There you go,
now this is the kind of stuff that we often see in the Monterey Bay National Sanctuary,
where essentially the animal dives down into about the top of the thermocline
and then as it moves back out again it's grabbing jellies on the way back up often on the way back
up. And is that at a particular time of day. Yes, there's not a lot of that behavior that
forging behavior that goes on at night, a lot of it happens during the early morning
late afternoon hours, even during the middle of the day. You would think so again with this
big three-dimensional environment the largest habitat on earth, there is a mass migration,
something we call the deep scattering layer. Correct. Where layers of organisms dense
at night will do a diurnal or daily migration all the way up. This is happening
worldwide, ocean wide, there is a mass migration of organisms migrating up. If you were to see them
diving down at night it makes sense because they might be feeding on these
you know nutrient-rich layers. The jellyfish are going to change their position in the water too
and part of that is just a matter of for instance jellies won't be near the surface
when it's windy because they're getting beat up by the waves, so they go down and stay
beneath the waves. After we have a couple really calm days, then you'll see the jellies at the top,
you know at the surface. The leatherbacks don't care, they're eating these jellies typically in
the upper 20 meters of the water column. Although this is an animal is well known for, world
renowned really for its diving abilities when it's in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary,
it's just lurking beneath the surface, usually in the upper five meters of the water column. Here
we've got some footage of leatherback foraging just off the coast here of central California.
You can see that obviously there's quite a few jellies to choose from here. How it determines
which one it's going to take, I don't know. But in this case here, these are large jellyfish,
large sea nettles to be specific and because they're so large, this animal's actually got
to handle them and so in this case here you can see this animal is scouring out the area beneath
the belt. This is where the highest calorie content of the jellyfish is located, is in the
arms the oral arms, the manubrium, the gonads. How come they don't get stung?
Well, I don't know, maybe they do get stuck. Is there something protecting them in those papillae?
No I'm not aware about that, but there could be, I'm just not familiar with. Or maybe it's
thick enough of the surface of those papillae that the
stinging cells and the nematocysts can't make it through. People often ask me about the stinging
aspect and I really can't say that I know how that works with leatherbacks at least.
So there you go see this in this case this animal's approaching from the beneath the jelly
to get that high calorie content that's located underneath the bell.
Well this is making me really hungry. Yea, I don't know, I don't have an appetite for jellies myself.
Thank you, Scott, as you know Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is one of the most
biodiverse places in the world. You can see in the upper corner here, there's plankton. Plankton
is the base to all this biodiversity. Plankton produces one of every breath that we breathe.
The ocean is so pivotal and so important just like trees on land, the phytoplankton photosynthesizes
and creates so much oxygen almost fifty percent. This is important because the zooplankton come and
eat those phytoplankton and then it brings marine mammals and reptiles like your leatherback turtles
to Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Some people would say that the sanctuary
is the Serengeti of the Sea because it has such diversity and the jellies are all part of that.
So can you tell us when those jellies come to our coast? The jellyfish and other gelatinous
zooplankton are part of the zooplankton community obviously and they're here all year round,
however blooms like this these occur during the summer months so particularly
you know by late August and early September, the biomass of jellies is at its peak at that point
and that's of course why when leatherbacks are here to consume these. In this case here,
these are brown sea nettles. This is the favorite food of the leatherback turtle and by late summer,
early fall the biomass is its greatest. The jellies themselves are their largest. The bell
diameter maxes out by that time to be about nearly 40 centimeters diameter so it's a very large
scyphomedusa, you know the classic shape with the bell and the arms and so forth, hanging below
the animal. Now they're not a very high calorie item so you have to eat a lot of them. Fortunately
the Monterey Bay National Sanctuary has just incredible amount of brown sea nettles occurring
here during the summer and fall months. This is why the leatherbacks are here is to eat those. The
brown sea nettle is like the favorite food to this turtle, like dark chocolate is to us.
It's the favorite food here in the along the west coast of the United States or the west coast of
North America. Now other places as I mentioned this population being somewhat diverse with
some of them actually using other areas of the oceans like the south China sea for instance,
they're not going to find sea nettles there, they'll find another jellyfish species like
probably a Rhizostome that in those areas there's so many jellyfish that they actually
have fisheries for jellyfish, commercial fisheries, so people can eat jellyfish as well.
I don't really find it very appetizing myself but nevertheless yes, they're eating sea nettles
here on the west coast. So people when they're walking the beach I know you can find in the late
summer and early fall you can see purple striped jellies you can see the moon jelly Aurelia and
also these sea nettles washing up. So if you're ever out walking on the beach make sure you look
for what's on the beach, That's really tells you a lot and it would remind you maybe that
possibly leatherbacks are here off of Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
All right, well that was wonderful thank you Scott. Thank you Tanzle for
sharing so much with us about the leatherback and giving us such an immersive experience.
I just want to open up for questions, We have a few questions that have come in and so Scott if
I could get everyone to get their cameras on. Looks like we're all here and unmute yourselves
I'm going to just kick it off with a question
Scott. This would be for you just about the kind of populations that are happening with the Pacific
populations of leatherbacks versus the Atlantic. Can you tell us a little bit about the status?
Sure the status in the Pacific is not very good. There are two populations, an eastern Pacific
population that's primarily in Costa Rica, Mexico and then what we saw here the western
Pacific population and that's the tropical island states for instance in the western Pacific.The
eastern Pacific population's thought to have just maybe about 750 females adult reproductive
females at the present time and the western Pacific population is about 1300. In contrast,
in the northwest Atlantic population, there's over 20 000. Now quite a bit more in the in the
Atlantic ocean, but I would just mention that more most recently in the last five to seven years that
people have noticed some kind of decline beginning at some of those beaches in the Atlantic as well
but clearly the Atlantic population is far more robust at this time than what's happening in the
Pacific where both the eastern and western Pacific populations are an immediate threat of extinction.
Okay well the the numbers aren't doing so well here in the Pacific population and and
are there any additional protections that are coming on board. We know that these guys are
federally protected, they're an endangered species and for NOAA fisheries, they are a Species in the
Spotlight. Is there anything we're doing off the west coast here in California? Well yes, the state
of California has actually taken some steps for the species to become a candidate for threatened
or endangered status under California's Endangered Species Act. So he yet another protection here
locally for the leatherback and as i mentioned in the interview with Tanzle, that makes the west
coast of the united states probably the safest place in the whole Pacific for a leatherback
Excellent. I think I was reading that they're going to be making some kind of in the next year
or so we should see something look for it in the news. Terrific, all right well I'm going to go
ahead and kick it off to Chelsea who's going to be asking some questions that are coming in from
the audience. I've been monitoring the chat box or the question box all evening and you guys have had
a ton of great questions. I'm sorry in advance if we're probably not gonna be able to get to
all of them but hopefully we get a few. So I'm gonna dive right in. The first one's for Scott.
I'm gonna combine them a little bit Scott. Why are turtles so long-lived? Do you know of the
oldest documented turtle and similarly maybe why do they travel so far to nest.
Okay I'll go with the the first one there about the long lived. I think maybe what some people
are thinking about are tortoises in that case like land tortoises which are known to live very
long lives. In the case of the leatherback turtle, we really don't know exactly how long they live.
People have trapped animals for upwards of 30 to 40 years that maybe when they first saw them
the animal might have been about 20 years old, so that would mean that maybe a leatherback can
survive for you know 50 to 60 years. Of course it's a dangerous world out there in the ocean
in addition to some of the anthropogenic threats. There are natural predators as well like sharks
and orcas and crocodiles. Your last question about why do they have such a long migration and
travel so long from Monterey bay to their nesting beaches.
Because in this case, the turtles that use Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary have
essentially identified that as their foraging ground. They show fidelity to that and come back
to this place throughout their lifetime, even though there are other places closer
to get a bite, to forage, the animals don't know about those places and so they come here
and you see the same thing with fidelity being displayed to the nesting beach itself.
The way I've explained it in the past and let me know if I'm wrong is that it's sort of like
when the babies are leaving the nesting beach they go in whatever direction sort
of makes sense to them at the time and maybe they end up for a longer journey than others.
Well actually when they leave the nesting beaches, there's little hatchlings that they
get moved around a bunch by ocean currents and so most of the time they're going to
get moved into an area where they will starve frankly. We figure that maybe out of a 1000 eggs
that maybe one out of those thousand will actually survive to become an adult animal.
This is partly why the leatherbacks lay so many eggs. An individual female will be responsible
for multiple clutches anywhere from 2 to 3 clutches, up to 10 clutches and each clutch
has about 70 to 80 eggs in it. So they lay a lot of eggs because of the very low probability
of survivorship to adulthood. That's the way the selection process works for leatherbacks.
Excellent, thanks for that clarification. Thinking along the nesting lines, do males ever come ashore
and similarly, would we ever see females here in Monterey Bay? Females or males? Sorry, those were
two questions. First of all, do males ever go ashore like at the nesting beaches? No, a male
and the only time a male is down on shore is when it was that big and it never comes to shore again.
And then do both males and females come to Monterey Bay to feed?
Yes males and females come to Monterey Bay to forage here. We have sampled males as well
as females here. They also engaged in that migration. Again those animals have probably
likely identified this as their foraging ground, so this is where they come to be.
All of the reproductive activity, the mating and things like that happens over on the other side.
We've never on all the years we've done aerial surveys and sampled leatherbacks,
we've never seen any mating activity on the foraging ground. They're pretty clean.
They're just here to eat. Great so I'm gonna switch it up and pass it over to Tanzle. We
had a lot of comments and praise for the animations this evening. Lots of people
had questions about how that was done. So specifically, I think this would go to Ed.
How long does it take to make and animate that 3d model of the sea turtle?
Well, for this one specifically there was a lot of iteration going on with it. First it was nice
first of all great having Stacy champion this relationship with NOAA and Lisa.
We've been working for a while together on all different kinds of things and this is
just some of the things that we've worked on together and so there's
there's a lot of other things that we've been researching and experimenting with, as far as
how can we especially with something like like the leatherback turtle, which is this elusive creature
that you really you'd never stand next to it in real life, unless it was a very rare occasion,
maybe on a beach somewhere where there you know was very protected so to be able to just
have the experience of standing there around it for a while. There was a lot of conversation
that happened with Scott when he came and saw the first iterations of it where it was like
I haven't been able to look at this long sort of in the swimming state. There's some interesting
concepts that we're going over especially ---- how does it move in the water really?What's going on
with the back flippers? Are they steering? Are they propelling it? Scott was like yeah you know
there's some question about exactly how it does all of that stuff because
a lot of the camera work is really sort of focused on where it's going and this sort of idea of
capturing it from every angle and how it moves through the water. It took us looking at at what
other turtles do, but but it's so unique. It's not like most other turtles that you think of.
As far as animating it, the actual animation of it there's there's a lot of techniques that go into
building sort of the internal rig for it and what that should look like and what we need
to articulate as well as when you saw sort of the see-through version of it, we wanted to make sure
that we could have sort of a transparent version that had all of these elements to it. The swimming
is kind of animation part of it that probably took the least amount of time than sort of building
the model, making sure that the skin looked correct. We also built a skeleton inside of it
and maybe Stacy could speak real quick because it might come up and other things is how we managed
to do the skull which you saw a little bit of we saw the brain but the actual skull that was in it,
how we came up with that you might want to speak to that real quick.
We were fortunate enough to get access to Moss Landing Marine Labs Jim Harvey through Scott,
and he lent us several of his skulls. We spent an afternoon photographing the skulls in a process
called photogrammetry. So Ed's got a printout right there that we made from that process so when
you see the skull in there, we have versions of it that are actually composites of real photographs.
The process of photogrammetry is like stitching together hundreds of photographs to make an actual
3d object. When you ask how long it took, this was as Ed said, it was an iterative process of
going back and forth with the marine biologists and having them look at what we made and and
having them say well maybe or you know maybe a little bigger this way a little smaller that way.
I can't speak to the technical building of it but this this is a relationship that's been going on,
these conversations have been going on for a couple years. I'm gonna hit it back to Scott
and I'm gonna try for the sake of time to combine many people's questions into one or two. So people
are very concerned about all the different threats to leatherbacks and we now know that they are
a declining species and that our current pacific population is declining and so people want to know
what the what the greatest impacts or the greatest threats are to them. So for instance people have
mentioned things such as sea level rise on their nesting beaches oil spills of course,
warming waters in the pacific potentially affecting their migration, ingesting plastic
and vessel strikes. Can you kind of sum up what the greatest threats would be to leatherbacks?
At this point a lot of them are really anthropogenic threats. Now
you think about it, if the leatherback has been on the planet for about 70 to 80 million years,
it's seen climate change before, it's seen meteor you know meteor striking the planet,
it's seen lots of natural calamities. Like i mentioned, it has some natural predators. But the
decline that we're seeing now is is recent and it's really an anthropogenic cause.
We mentioned fishery bycatch that happens. This is a trans boundary species and the fact that
it doesn't have the same kind of protections across the Pacific as it does here off the west
coast the United States is a big problem. Ingestion of plastic likely plays a role,
to what extent it actually affects this animal at a population level, I don't know. Some of
the nesting beaches are not really considered safe, so we've got colleagues for instance in
Papua Barat Indonesia and in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea where some
of the beaches are protected and monitored, but that's not the case throughout the whole
nation or throughout all the beaches that the animal might visit. There's people poaching eggs.
Some cases people actually kill adult animals that come up on the beach for the meat itself
so that's another that's another reason. Things like climate change is and potential sea level
rise is a threat in that the population is so much lower than it used to be. If it was a robust
population, you know leatherbacks are got a bunch of tricks you know. They for instance they don't
do like put all their eggs in one basket if you will. They will occasionally put some
nests in some other places, with the idea being with the primary beach becomes unfavorable for
reproduction that maybe some of these other places where they've got a few other nests,
those will work. That did work for them over time when the population was much larger but now we've
got a smaller population, not as many, there's not many as many cards in the deck if you will
as there was in the past. I know that was kind of a long-winded answer but
most of the threats these days that are really putting the population at risk
are anthropogenic threats. On that note, I think this has to be our last question for time,
similarly a lot of people want to know what they can do to help protect leatherbacks?
Yes there's a few things you can do to protect leatherbacks for certain. I think for first
and foremost is become an educated consumer of seafood. Try to learn where your seafood comes
from how it's caught. You know if it becomes a little bit too difficult, I think you could always
you know just rely on consuming U.S. caught seafood that comes with a side
dish of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, rather than
a side dish of dead turtle or dead dolphin and support groups and nonprofits.
Did we lose Scott? It looks like it, but an opportune time because I think we were just
wrapping up. I'm going to assume he was saying support groups like nonprofit organizations
like maybe the Monterey Bay Aquarium and others that get information about seafood sustainability.
I'd like to give a shout out to Upwell.org who's been a partner in promoting this webinar with us
and Upwell and NOAA fisheries. Upwell is a great organization that works on
behalf of turtles and specifically leatherback turtles as well. Everyone thank you so much,
I realized when we were getting on this webinar that tonight is the Dodgers and the
Giants game, it's the 5th game and so I think it is so wonderful that all of you came out tonight
to learn about leatherback turtles and to be with us, we really really appreciate it. So,
go Giants. Go giants and I think that the other few hundred people are probably watching it.
You as registrants will receive the recording at a later date, so you can pass it on to friends.
All right thanks everyone. Have a good night bye bye. Leatherback turtle day is tomorrow.