Green turtle youngsters roam far and wide

Tagging doesn’t work on green turtles (Chelonia mydas) – they are just too small, says Nathan Putman of Oregon State University in Corvallis. “Any tags you put on them would sink them.” To figure out where they go, Putman teamed up with geneticist Eugenia Naro-Maciel of the City University of New York. They used a model of ocean circulation to estimate where the young turtles would be carried from natal beaches in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian oceans. They also compared the genetic make-up of baby turtles at those beaches with adult turtles at foraging grounds. By combining the two methods, they were able to produce maps showing where turtles go after hatching. Leer más.