‘We’ll shell out to put lost baby turtles on a flight to the Canaries’
Cold-stunned baby loggerhead turtles are washing up on the Irish coast in unprecedented numbers – and baffled scientists are hoping DNA will solve the mystery. reports. Scientists baffled as tiny sea creatures are washing up thousands of miles from home
MARINE experts have hatched a novel plan to save the record numbers of tiny turtles from the US washing up on this side of the Atlantic – putting them on a Ryanair flight to the Canaries.
When marine biologist Kevin Flannery was handed a frozen baby turtle washed up on the west coast of Ireland last year, he noted it was the first juvenile he had encountered in 30 years.
It was extremely rare for a youngster to survive the journey across the Atlantic from Florida, but in the following months he received two more calls to nurse cold-stunned baby turtles back to life in Dingle Oceanworld.
The loggerheads famously hatch in the sand on beaches in Florida or the Caribbean along the Gulf of Mexico, Cape Verde in Africa, or off the Greek islands before making a dash for the ocean under the cover of darkness.
But there are no known nesting sites in western Europe – as the waters are too cold.
Mystified at the unprecedented numbers, Kevin contacted Mark de Boer in Rotterdam Zoo, who chairs the Sea Turtle Working Group for the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria.
“He told me that two arrived in Holland, one in Belgium, and one in Germany in the last month. We’re baffled,” he said.
“I can’t figure out how they are getting there at such a young age. You come across them once in a blue moon but not in the volumes we’ve had this year.”
They drift across from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Canaries where they spend their adolescent years - but they shouldn’t be in Northern European waters in winter.
“Their survival rare would be slim or nil. They are not migratory to here, they are not native to here and they shouldn’t be here. It’s a mystery.”
The marine biologist is hoping to get a Ryanair flight for baby loggerhead turtle Maya, who was rescued late last year on a Louisburg beach in Mayo and is ready to be released in the Canaries.
“We’re hoping Ryanair will help us get her back to the Canaries because they have a hospital there, and I can get DNA profiles done there too. We already got one released in the Azores late last year.”
De Boer is similarly baffled by the phenomenon of sea turtles thousands of miles off course.
“For now, we think that the warming of the North Atlantic may be a major cause,” he said. “I think the animals are coming north and swimming higher in the English Channel.
“Once it gets colder and the animals can move less, I don’t think they will get out. They then float undercooled on the North Sea and are blown onto the beach with a storm. That’s my thinking.”
Flannery said he is hoping DNA tests that have been sent to UCC will provide answers as they should reveal where the turtles originated.
One theory he has is that someone could be releasing loggerhead hatchlings in the North Atlantic. “Or they’ve hatched somewhere nearer us,” he said, adding that marine heatwaves off the Irish coast last summer could have attracted the turtles.
He is asking people walking the Irish coast to watch out for stranded loggerheads. “They can give us a call in the aquarium and we’ll start warming them and treating them.”