my main interest is understanding how or
specifically what the mechanism is for
these sea turtles to synchronize their
nesting behaviors we do not know why the
sea turtles specifically come to Austin
el sea turtles are renowned for their
ability to travel extremely long
distances as young turtles before
returning to the same geographic area
where they hatched to lay their eggs as
adults this is a behavior called natal
homing that exists in all species of sea
turtles but we really don’t have a very
good idea for how they do it possible
that a sea turtle has a pheromone that
they secrete into the ocean and that
perhaps this concentration of this
chemical reaches some sort of threshold
where all of a sudden the turtles know
that it’s time to net and come up on the
beach at that point if a sea turtle
needs to smell a pheromone or be able to
perceive it then they need their sense
of smell in order to know that it’s time
to do this math nesting
we are taking a boat that we hire with a
local fisherman out to the offshore
waters of Austin L and we are about two
miles off the shore
once we reach that area we’re looking
over the horizon for aggregations of sea
turtles in the water once we find the
sea turtles
Roger is helping me and going into the
water and safely capturing them and
bringing them onto the boat some days
they’re much more likely to swim away
and try to escape but other days they
don’t seem on the experiment that we’re
focusing on is trying to see whether we
take away that sense of smell if a sea
turtle is less likely to come up on the
beach and participate in a mass nesting
event once we have the sea turtle on the
boat then we are doing two different
treatments that we’re applying to the
nostrils of the sea turtle we are doing
one treatment that is sea water and this
is a control and the treatment that
we’re actually doing experimental E is
called zinc sulfate and this is a
chemical that temporarily an FC sizes
the olfactory bulb of sea turtles so
that the sea turtle will temporarily be
unable to smell anything in the few days
leading up to a mass nesting event that
we’re expecting we have been going out
on the boat and capturing as many sea
turtles as possible before we release
the turtle we’ve been drying the
carapace and
using spray-paint to mark a line either
horizontally or vertically on the
carapace depending on the treatment and
then we released a sea turtle during
every mass nesting event we always have
people on the beach surveying the beach
and transact surveys to count the number
of nesting females so I have these
volunteers looking for the females that
we have marked to see how many of each
type of sea turtle is actually coming up
on the beach nest I certainly don’t
think this is a question that I can
answer in the scope of my PhD so my hope
is that I can then move forward and take
this as you know a careers worth of
research that I can keep keep trying to
answer more and more questions for
specifically what the mechanism is for
these sea turtles to synchronize their
nesting behaviors we do not know why the
sea turtles specifically come to Austin
el sea turtles are renowned for their
ability to travel extremely long
distances as young turtles before
returning to the same geographic area
where they hatched to lay their eggs as
adults this is a behavior called natal
homing that exists in all species of sea
turtles but we really don’t have a very
good idea for how they do it possible
that a sea turtle has a pheromone that
they secrete into the ocean and that
perhaps this concentration of this
chemical reaches some sort of threshold
where all of a sudden the turtles know
that it’s time to net and come up on the
beach at that point if a sea turtle
needs to smell a pheromone or be able to
perceive it then they need their sense
of smell in order to know that it’s time
to do this math nesting
we are taking a boat that we hire with a
local fisherman out to the offshore
waters of Austin L and we are about two
miles off the shore
once we reach that area we’re looking
over the horizon for aggregations of sea
turtles in the water once we find the
sea turtles
Roger is helping me and going into the
water and safely capturing them and
bringing them onto the boat some days
they’re much more likely to swim away
and try to escape but other days they
don’t seem on the experiment that we’re
focusing on is trying to see whether we
take away that sense of smell if a sea
turtle is less likely to come up on the
beach and participate in a mass nesting
event once we have the sea turtle on the
boat then we are doing two different
treatments that we’re applying to the
nostrils of the sea turtle we are doing
one treatment that is sea water and this
is a control and the treatment that
we’re actually doing experimental E is
called zinc sulfate and this is a
chemical that temporarily an FC sizes
the olfactory bulb of sea turtles so
that the sea turtle will temporarily be
unable to smell anything in the few days
leading up to a mass nesting event that
we’re expecting we have been going out
on the boat and capturing as many sea
turtles as possible before we release
the turtle we’ve been drying the
carapace and
using spray-paint to mark a line either
horizontally or vertically on the
carapace depending on the treatment and
then we released a sea turtle during
every mass nesting event we always have
people on the beach surveying the beach
and transact surveys to count the number
of nesting females so I have these
volunteers looking for the females that
we have marked to see how many of each
type of sea turtle is actually coming up
on the beach nest I certainly don’t
think this is a question that I can
answer in the scope of my PhD so my hope
is that I can then move forward and take
this as you know a careers worth of
research that I can keep keep trying to
answer more and more questions for
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