Herps In The News: Leatherback Turtle-cam

After our last discussion article about leatherback turtles and the recent local story about the leatherback that was nursed back to health at the sea turtle hospital, I decided to further research the topic of leatherbacks and came across some interesting recent news stories about these fascinating turtles. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) published a story yesterday within their Technology & Science section about a team of researchers that, for the first time ever and after 10 years of research work, have managed to fit wild leatherback sea turtles with cameras to monitor their behavior underwater. According to the CBC's article and video, this is the first footage of its kind. In the article it is noted that the scientists working for the Canadian Sea Turtle Network worked over 8 summers using custom-engineered GPS-equipped cameras that were attached to the turtles via suction cups. In a video accompanying the article, one of the main scientists on the project stated that the project was very challenging as finding the turtles in the wild was hard enough, let alone trying to fix a suction cup camera to the turtle in the correct location at the right time. Twenty-six turtles were equipped with such cameras, all off the coast of Nova Scotia. The cameras were mounted on the turtles' carapaces directly behind the head giving a "turtle's eye view" of feeding and swimming behavior. The footage captured during the research shows turtles searching for and eating jellyfish as well as diving down to depths of almost 40 meters. Earlier research on these turtles was limited to general satellite tracking and little information was accessible about the turtles underwater behaviors in general as they summered off of the Canadian coastline. The researchers are hopeful that this footage, by providing insight into turtle behavior underwater, can help develop strategies that can be undertaken to help save these turtles from harmful human interaction such as entanglement in fishing nets.  

Overall I found the article and accompanying video to give a well-rounded overview of the research project, and what was accomplished as a result of the research. In general I believe that the target audience of the article is members of the general public that are interested in turtle conservation. This is due to the fact that the researchers and newscaster do not go into extreme detail regarding the specifics of the research work beyond explaining how the cameras work and how they are attached to the turtles along with the general results of the study of the turtles. Still I think there was a large quantity of information in the article that is both interesting and informative in regards to sea turtle behavior and biology. The newscasters provided a well-balanced story that to me seems free of any bias or agenda using a mixture of their own personal account of the results of the study along with interviewsof researchers from the project to give a more in-depth perspective on the tasks required to get the video that gives such important information about the turtles. 

See an excerpt form the article's video below to watch a leatherback chomping on some tasty jellyfish!!!

Article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/leatherback-sea-turtles-fitted-with-cameras-hunt-for-jellyfish-1.3004609