In 2007, sea turtle researchers Kate Mansfield of the US National Marine Fisheries Service and Jeanette Wyneken of Florida Atlantic University (FAU) were faced with a dilemma. They wanted to track loggerhead turtles during the oceanic phase of their lives, from the time they leave nesting beaches as hatchlings until they move back to near-shore habitats some years later—but such young animals were too small for the tagging devices used on adult turtles.
“It’s easy to glue a tag on some of the larger turtles, but the first couple of year age classes have been much too small,” Mansfield says. “So there’s this whole gap in our knowledge of what turtles are doing, how they’re behaving, what they’re eating, what part of the water column they’re swimming within. From the time they leave the nest as hatchlings to the time they come back, there’s just this huge unknown.” And given ...
