Satellite transmitters help Cristina Miranda to understand the movements and habitats of endangered hawksbill sea turtles in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
In 2008, I had just begun volunteering at Equilibrio Azul — a non-profit marine-research and -conservation organization based in Quito — when colleagues discovered a hawksbill sea turtle nesting at La Playita beach in Ecuador. The eastern Pacific population of hawksbill sea turtles is one of the most endangered in the world and was considered functionally extinct in the region before this turtle and others were observed.
That discovery was a tipping point for hawksbill research in Ecuador and throughout the Pacific Ocean. Since 2008, we’ve found about 20 nests each year at La Playita, and one season, we documented 50. We have tagged 11 adult females with satellite transmitters. Previously, most of our understanding of these turtles had been based on observations in the Caribbean, where the reptiles are strictly coral-reef dwellers. But Ecuador’s reefs are mostly rocky, with patches of coral, and we were surprised to see females migrate south to mangroves, mainly for food.
Our findings have overturned assumptions that neonates were just carried along by currents. Instead, we found that one-day-old turtles can swim against the current. They aim for a specific direction — north by northwest — as they learn to dive and swim. We tracked one-year-old hawksbills to Costa Rican waters, a journey of roughly 2,000 kilometres, before we lost their signal.
Cristina Miranda is a scientific coordinator at Equilibrio Azul in Quito, Ecuador. Interview by Virginia Gewin.
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