One day, biodiversity info: Sea turtles, great adventurers!

Sea turtles are large migratory birds capable of traveling hundreds, even thousands of kilometers, depending on the ocean currents. This long journey begins from their birth when they reach the sea and can last several years. When the age of sexual maturity is reached, the sea turtles will migrate to reproduce, they then begin a long journey between the feeding area and the nesting sites, in order to perpetuate the species.

Sea turtles will fill up on energy by building up good fat reserves before starting this long journey. It is for this reason that they do not reproduce every year, but every three to five years depending on the species, the time necessary to recover from this colossal effort.

Scientists have been able to highlight these movements by individual marking of the females, by fixing a metal ring on the anterior fin or by inserting a chip of a few millimeters, when the females come to reproduce on the beaches. Some of these turtles were found several thousand kilometers from the place where they were tagged.

The use of Argos beacons has become possible thanks to the development of new satellite technologies. This beacon is fixed on the shell of the turtle and sends in real time the position of the turtle each time it rises to the surface to breathe. This technology allows you to learn more about migratory routes, highlighting the most secret sites.

A study was carried out by the CNRS-IPHC on 10 green turtles which were marked on the departure from Martinique. The results showed that the green turtles moved across the Caribbean and Atlantic region in six different directions and 50% of these turtles reached the same Brazilian feeding areas used by the adult green turtles coming from Guyana. French. A turtle left the Guyanese coast for the first ever recorded transatlantic migration of juvenile green turtles, swimming to Guinea-Bissau, which is an important green turtle nesting site along the African coast.

On the Guyana coasts in June 2019, the CNRS-IPHC equipped 10 leatherback turtles with Argos beacons.

You can follow their movements ? https://my.wildlifecomputers.com/data/map/?id=5d67cae72c72b04cd61fc859&fbclid=IwAR3uV3KWsH07xpBNNeDXomxzpIXEZLB5yB0VTE9qFFKYG6qYcYv1jsrxJpk

To ensure effective conservation of these endangered species, it is therefore essential to strengthen a cooperative network of sea turtles at an international level.