For those of you going through leatherback withdrawal, here's a quick blurb about the research I've been doing for my master's thesis. I am looking at the distribution and diet of leatherback sea turtles and comparing it to that of the ocean sunfish. Ocean sunfish are big, funny-looking fish! They seem to have a lot in common with leatherbacks, including a love for jellyfish! Ocean sunfish are accidentally caught very often by commercial fisheries and could potentially become threatened (although they are not listed as threatened or endangered now).

So for part of my study, I'm collecting the stomach and intestines from stranded leatherbacks and sunfish. Today I went down to the National Marine Fisheries Lab in Miami to assist with a leatherback necropsy. The turtle stranded on Jan. 04 in Miami and was missing three flippers. The rear flipper that remained contained a metal tag, much like the ones we use here in Juno. It was not one of our nesters, thank goodness, but this turtle was, in fact, a female, and it looked like she was preparing to nest this season. From her injuries, we could also tell that she had some sort of fishing line or rope wrapped around her front flippers. This probably caused her to become weak and unable to swim or feed, and perhaps eventually caused her death.

From this turtle we learn a major lesson: losing one mature adult means losing hundreds of hatchlings (and hundreds of chances to take this species off the endangered list). We need to prevent trash from ending up in the ocean, and we need to be informed about the possible harm that commercial fishing can inflict on many species of pelagic creatures.

But... this turtle was able to help me carry out my research and gave many other scientists the opportunity to learn more about leatherbacks, so maybe it's not such a sad story.