From the Vault: Sea Turtles with Christine Figgener

So just a heads up that that's coming. But still great episode and not highly recommend it. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we've got a really great interview to share with you today. This

is with Dr Christine Figner. Uh So, as a way of introduction, Dr Christine Figner is a marine conservation biologist and science communicator who has been really successful on social media. Sometimes known as the Sea Turtle straw Lady, she has raised global awareness of the issue of ocean plastic pollution and has been studying sea turtles for over fifteen years.

You might have seen her in a viral video moment where she was she and her research team were removing a plastic straw that was lodged in a sea turtles nose, and of course that video triggered a lot of thought about what is what is the effect of, say, single use plastics such as plastic straws in on marine life. Christine Today is a is a science communicator who uh speaks at events about her sea turtle conservation work, fighting

plastic pollution, and empowering women in science. In eighteen, Time Magazine honored her outreach and advocacy efforts by naming her a Next Generation Leader. As Director of Science and Education for the US based Footprint Foundation, she travels the globe educating people about the effects of plastic pollution on our environment and human health, and inspiring people to reduce their

use of plastic. She's also the co founder and scientific lead of a community centered, grassroots conservation organization in Costa Rica that is researching and protecting sea turtles. Christine's overall goal is to reach as many people as possible with her message to eliminate plastic from our environment, save sea turtles from extinction, empower women in science, and make our planets safer and healthier for wildlife and people alike. So that's just a really fun chat. Let's go ahead and

dive into it. Let's get into some gnarly uh facts and stories about sea turtles. We have all sea turtle questions for you here today that we may ask you whale stuff too, because you were you were also originally interested in cetations, right, Yeah, somebody did the homework on me. Yeah, I became a marine biologist because I love humpbag whales.

Oh did you happen to read the story of supposedly a man off the coast province town It was a lobster diver reported that he was temporarily swallowed by a humpback whale. Do you believe it's true? Creepy and funny? Is that allegedly it's the same guy that like a few years ago, survived airplane crash in Costa Rica, one of the few survivors. Wow you about having more than

one life? Yeah? Well wait, so do you have any reason to be skeptical of the story or do you think it's plausible that he did go into the humpback whales mouth and then was spit out. I think that's possible. I don't think it was swallowed. I just think I mean not swallowed all the way right, So I think probably.

I mean, if you've ever seen humpbag whales feeding, right, so they kind of have those bubble curtains and then they just go in and just like open their mouths wide just to like, you know, swallow the largest quantity possible. And if you happen to just be there. But I'm sure that w I was like, oh my god, what's that in my mouth? Is just like wrong place, wrong time. Huh. Well, we just we just jumped right into it. Maybe we

should back up and uh and actually get officially started. Um. So one place we do like to start here is Christine. Can you just introduce yourself to the audience, stating your name, your title, as well as any key affiliations or employers organizations that you want right up there at the top

with your ID. Yeah, my name is Christine figure. I am I Trade the marine biologist, and I have been working on the interface between conservation and applied signs for about more than fifteen years now, mainly with sea turtles, but also with cetaceans a wells and dolphins. And right now I am running a small community based grassroots organization

in Constrica that is protecting sea turtles. And I'm also the director of science and Education for the US based Footprint Foundation, which is we're trying to convince peop well to reduce their use of plastics. So that's pretty much me and I'm nutshell. I guess. So you mentioned that you were originally interested in cetations before you got into sea turtles as a research area. What how did you How did you make that leap? And I guess you can back all the way up to cetations if you want. Yeah,

I mean, I in my teens. You know, we're usually people are obsessing about boy bands. I guess I'm not going to say which one was popular during my times because that would review my age, I guess um. But instead of that, I was actually collecting, you know, posters and articles and other stuff about whales and dolphins. And I particularly loved hum big whales. So I I played music. I played the guitar, and I sing and I always thought, you know, it would be so cool to study the

songs of humping whales. You know, it's kind of a cultural thing, and it would have combined a lot of my interest into like this one thing. But then I happened to have the chance to go to Constrica on a sea turtle or into a sea turtle project when I did my master's into a leather back project, very specific, and I totally fell in love with that type of

work because it's super hands on. I don't think there's that many you know jobs as a wildlife biologist where you can be with such a large animal, you know, for extended times in the natural environment without having to you know, tranquilize them or restrain them even in any shape or form. And it was so impressive, just like the environment. Right, So, you're on these tropical beaches, have

this incredible you know, biodiversity all around you. You have the jungle right next to you on one side, and you have you know, the vast ocean on the other. You have this incredible night sky over your head, and then you just you know, walk, you know, kilometers and hours without end on the beach just to find this like one track that leads up to the verm, up to the vegetation and you hope that the turtle is

still there. And then once you see the turtle, it's just you know, they're real life dinosaurs if you think about it, right, they have been around for hundred on a hundreds, but definitely more than a hundred million years, especially leather bags, which are like the oldest lineage of sea turtles that we still have. And when you just sit next to them, they're massive. I mean, they're absolutely gigdentists.

And you can see them, you know, using their real flippers just like hands, digging their acts chamberers squeezing out the eggs, creating a new generation. And yeah, I totally I was totally in awe and I just thought, Okay, this is like the coolest thing I've ever done in my life. And that is just how I fell in

love and just stayed with it. Wow, you know, speaking of just how long sea turtles have been around, Um, well, what is it about the sea turtle that has enabled it to survive while so many other marine reptiles have gone extinct? Like what is what do you think is a winning design of the sea turtle? You know, that's that's a really good question. And I don't think we have like a definite answer. I think, especially in evolutionary biology,

we always make very many intelligent guesses. But of course, at one point there were a lot more sea turtle species than there are nowadays. As so we are down

to seven, seven extent species. And if you look at the seven species right now, it's really interesting because they all have similar ecologies to certain degree because you know, you can find them in usually warmer waters because the active therm, so that means they cannot regulate their own body temperature, so that means they have to get an outside source to really you know, get their metabolism going. So that means you find them in tropical waters subtropical waters,

and they're all coming onto the beach to nest. But then if you look at that diet, and I think that is really the key is you know, how they diversified. It's really over the over the access of the diet. So we have very specialized species such as the hawks bill or the leather bags. Of the hawks bill feeds mainly on sponges. The leather bag feeds mainly on jellyfish. I mean, that's another really cool thing if you think about how large that animal is that feeds on an

animal that's just barely you know, anything other than water. Um. Then we have green turtles that are as adults that these mainly herbivorous, so they're very different in their you know, trophic niche as we would say scientists. So that means, you know, they have very different diet and that is probably the the secret to their you know, coexistence, that they're not competing with each other for resources. And the other thing is, see, turtles are incredible resilience. So I've

never met um animals that are so resilient. I mean, I've seen so many turtles that have suffered incredible injuries literally you know, amputations of limbs or really crazy damage to their to their shell, and they still able to survive, and not just survive, but you know, still kind of go with their biological program go and nates come up to the beach and lay their eggs even though they might have literally no real flippers anymore, or massive slashes

in their carapace. I mean, I've seen really really sad things. But it also makes me think, wow, yeah, I mean you're really resilient, so that means things might not face you as much as others. And they're also pretty widespread, right, So that means we have really settled and almost all tropical waters. So um, even if maybe one population might go extinct, they are probably able to repopulate, you know,

into in from that population into other areas again. And that might have been you know, the secret of why they were able to survive so long, because they were probably able to first of all, migrate into into other places if if things became inhabitable or were able to you know, diversify that diet over the course of millions of years. And it seems also be the body plan that they have seems to be really successful. Right. So I don't know if everybody knows that, but turtles, not

just sea turtles. Um. Their shell is actually made from their rip catche that merged together. So the single rips it's kind of you know, became bony and just like yeah, became the shell. So the shell is actually the vertebra and the rips and everything else like your shoulder blades and everything moved inside. So they have created this incredible armor. I mean, in German, if you translate like turtle, it actually means shielded toad because they habits like shield and protected, right, um.

And that means, of course that once sea turtles have reached a certain body size, there's not that many natural predators that are actually able to eat a turtle, right So right now, I mean, we're taking like humans aside at this point, but if you're talking about natural predators, it's really only about you know, the animals really strong mandibles that can crack that shell. So that's the tiger shark, the j jack wires, and it's crocodiles that might be

able to really eat an entire turtle. I mean, they might be able otherwise to take like a bite out of flipper, but that's not the less just pipe with all the fat and all the all the meats, it's all inside of the shell, right, So correct me if I'm wrong. But I believe there's still some mystery about the sort of step wise evolutionary process that led to

the turtle having a shell? Isn't there? Because I think I was reading that um, it's sort of hypothesized that maybe a middle stage was first you had some kind of lizard like creature that had a wide, large rib cage, and then maybe in between it had a body plan that was sort of like you would see with models of the Ankleosaurus where they're sort of plates all over the back and then over time those plates fused. Is

that sort of in the right direction. Yeah. I mean I'm not an expert on like you know, the paleontology I think, or like the actual um evolution of of like the body plan. But what's interesting if you just look back, for example, or even just look at the lad back. So we have seven species as I set, and six of them all belong to the height shell

turtles um, so it's kind of the same group. And then we have the leather back turtles, which are their own lineage, and leather bags actually look a lot more like the you know, the the older lineages as well, because they have a reduced carapace. So leather bags are pretty much named because they have a soft shell, so

they do not have those bony plates. Um. If you look at it at a skeleton of the leather bag, you will not exactly see what I just said where the grips have grown together, so it's it's more like cartilage um um. And parts of it is it's just like a reduced shell. And our colon, for example, which is one of the you know, first sea turtles that that we've known of from the fossil finds looks a lot like leather bags, so they have you know, they have some type of shell, but it's more a reduced shell.

And also I think and other fossil finds, you can see that certain sea turtles, for example, had a like a stronger plastron which is like the belly part of the shell, so as you know, um, like kind of a reinforced carapace which is the upper part of the shell, and vice versa. So it might have been like different pressures for example, of where your natural predators came from.

So if you were mainly you know, attacked from the bottom, maybe it was you know, advantageous to have you know, a kind of reinforced shield on your belly rather than on your back or vice versa. So you don't know. But that's, like I said, that's the intelligent guesses that you have may have to make about evolution and why certain things developed or weren't successful in the end. Excellent.

So I'm not going to ask basically three questions at the same time, but they're very they're very simple and sudden. They all kind of float together. So, um, how many of the seven extant sea turtle species, have you observed in the wild, which ones do you work with the most and do you have a favorite. So from the seven I have seen in the wild six and missing

the flatback turtle. So we have two species which are considered endemic, which means they're only found in a very specific, very limited geo geographic range, which is first of all, the chemp stradily turtle, which can be mainly found or

solely found in the Gulf of Mexico. And then there's the flat back turtle, which is pretty much found in the waters around northern Australia or between Papa Papua New Guinea and and in Australia they but they nest mainly on the north shore of Australia, so I haven't seen that one yet. That is really um my last one that I'm missing. I do work mainly with the species

that we have in Costrica where I'm based. So the species I started with is the leather back turtle, but we're also getting you know, a lower number of green turtles nesting in the Caribbean as well as on the leather back beaches. I've worked on in the Pacific and then for my PhD, I really extensively studied olive red lace, which is one of the smallest ecs. And then right now, since last year, I just initiated a larger hospital project, which is also the same beach where the leather bags

are nesting. So always got some but now we're really focusing on, you know, monitoring the hospital population which is not nesting exactly at the same time than the leather backs. And well, my favorite one, heads down leather bags. I mean, I hate to say it, and everybody that disagrees with me, they're just wrong. Um, just because leather bags are just incredible. I mean they really they they just constitute so many or like they have so many superlatives about them. I mean,

they are the species that are distributed the widest. So we're still talking about an active them animal, right, an animal that is in fear, not able to regulate their body temperature. But you will find or you can't find leather blacks in waters that are substantially colder than what's

the perfect temple there would be for them. Right, So, our populations in Costa Rica, depending which side of the coast on they feed, either in front of Nova Scotia, in Canada, Wales, England, also in the North Sea, so recently there was actually stranding in Denmark um and then the ones that have nesting on the Pacific side, they are usually going down to Peru, which are also pretty cold waters. And how they can do it is, you know, they have really found a way of first of all,

maintaining their body temperature, the core temperature steady. So they have this like incredible fatty layers. It's almost like a winter coat that keeps them warm and insulated. But then of course they don't have it on their flippers, but they do have it around the eas aphagus, so that's really cool, right. So that means even when they like swallow their prey, which might be colder than their core temperature,

it prevents their core body temperature from dropping. And then it is you know, first of course it's a large animal, so they have a better surface to volume ratio. It's it's it's a term, it's called the gun to thermi um. You know that it's just like you don't lose as much heat over your surface just because you're large. And then also because your flippers of course are exposed, they're

not having this fetty tissue. And in theory, you know all that blood that circulates, the warm blood goes out, would cool down, go back, but no, they have this countercurrent system where you know, the warm blood that comes from the body is actually warming up the cold blood that comes back from the flipper without losing the heat roster there pretty much just like pass it on to

the blood that goes back into the body. And then the last thing that is actually a little bit more recent is that some scientists just discovered that leather bags are able to produce a certain amount of body heat through digestion, So they made them swallow temperature pills, um, you know, little devices that can literally measure the different temperature while they were going through the digestive truck and they're like, wow, okay, you're digesting and you're actually producing here.

That's pretty amazing. So you know the limits nations and what we know about active therms, and it's pretty it's pretty incredible. I mean, other bags are just wow, mind blown. Would that last fact mean that it's not actually such a strict dividing line between warm blooded animals and cold blooded animals, but more question of degree. This is this is a good question. Some people have argued that leather bags might be not as you know, strictly active therm

as we would have categorized them. But then, of course where do you draw the line? Right? Scientists like to have drawers where you can like stuff things into and it's just like, okay, you have this, but not that. And I think sometimes, you know, especially when you think about how evolution happens, it's just not that clean cut. So in talking about the leather back you were mentioning that it has a self warming throat. When you look inside their mouth, it does really look like a horror show.

They have these, uh, these spikes. So what's going on with all that? What does what does that tell us about the lifestyle of the leather act sea turtle? Well, I mean you just have to think about it. Right, you are a leather back turtle, You're swimming underwater and you are trying to eat this very glibbery thing, what is a jellyfish. But you also don't want to swallow the sea water, right, So it's not like you're wanting to eat seawater all the time, you know. So you're

taking a bite and you swallow the jellyfish. You swallow the sea water. But before you or maybe we shouldn't say swallow, so you kind of take it into your mouth, but before you actually swallow it, you want to get rid of the sea water, and so that means you also do not want to get rid of the jellyfish though, But it's so you know, sliming glibbery that there's a good chance it would go out if it wouldn't be for those spines that are covering the entire mouth down

all the way down to the aesephagus. Actually, other sea turtle species have those spines as well, they're just not so like in the mouth cavity already, so it's usually just like the aesephagus that is having those um But yeah, and in the ladder back it's right behind the mandibles, it's where it starts. So it looks at one of those alien mouth that you know, with that that are

pretty typical, I feel in science fiction movies. But it's really about and they're all pointing towards the stomach, and that means it's really kind of meant to, you know, for the jellyfish to get stuck in it and they are able to extract the water. Usually through their nostrils, so there's a connection between the mouth cavity and the nose um, so they don't even have to open the mouth and then they just collect the jellyfish and then

they just swallow it without all the sea water. That's amazing. So what does it mean to specialize in eating jellyfish? Like what kind of niche is that? Is that the kind of niche where you're getting more prey and it's easier to get or is it the other way around? What does that mean to you? Well, I mean, we don't know of how it started right to just see what it is right now. But the thing is sort of leather backs feed in areas where there's a high

density of of of jellyfish. So that means the energy that it takes for them to get to those jellyfish is not as large We're not is big, and they're obviously able to still fatten up enough to produce their eggs, will have enough energy to you know, do their large migrations.

And it's really funny if you ever get a chance to to watch some of those videos that were filmed in Nova Score in front of Nova Kotia, it is really you know, the leather bag, just swimming through the water and just like eating one eating another one do like these you know, large groups of jellyfish. Um, it's

just they have to eat a lot. So it's pretty much you know, tons probably um son so many parts of their of their body weights in order to to to sustain themselves and even you know, have more to do all of those things that they need to do to reproduce. But that is probably one of the reasons they're not nesting every year. So females skip usually one or two seasons in between so they have enough time to fatten up, use all the follicles, and then make

the migration back to to their nesting beaches. That that eating behavior kind of reminds me if you ever saw the episode of The Simpsons where Homer goes to space and the ends up eating the potato chips floating in zero G. Yes, that is a very accurate Actually, maybe not as crunchy, but definitely um yeah, thank so. I guess backing up a little bit to just sort of generally about sea turtles, what do you think are the biggest public misconceptions about sea turtles. I don't know if

there's as many misconceptions about sea turtles. This for example, about dolphins, um or sharks. I think people like sea turtles because they're cute. What I always find very interesting is that people really don't like reptiles in general. So you know, snakes and crocodiles people usually associate with evil. They have an evil look. And I always have to laugh because seatotles are also reptiles. It's just that they seem to be a little bit cuter or considered a

little bit cuter than and other animals. Um. I think a lot of people don't know much about, you know, the ecology of sea turtles, for example, that sea turtles have to breathe air, so they're you know, having lungs just like us. UM, that they're really highly migratory, so it's not like they're, you know, just hanging out in front of the beach and then they're coming back. I think there's just a lot of information that is not

known to the general public. I think that's other than misconceptions that I can think of, like out of the top of my head, I was in preparation for you coming on the show. Here, I was listening to Kara Museums interview with you on So You Want to Be a Marine Biologist podcast, which is at Marine Bio Dot Life, and I was fascinated by your descriptions of the are a batta, So I was wondering, could you tell our listeners what the arabata is and what it's like to

witness it and study it. Yeah. So, um, from all the sea turtle species, is only two species that engage in that what we call the aribada behavior. Arii bada is from the Spanish word for arrival, and it is

pretty much describing a synchronized mass nesting. So the olive redley and the camps really the two smallest species are the ones that do nest in those synchronized mass nestings, which usually happened in the case of olive relea is at least about once a month, and then depending if which season it is, you have like larger atibadas or smaller atibadas. But the really large adibadas can have up to half a million females, so you just have to envision.

I of course, it's not like it's all happening in one night, so it's usually over the course of or to seven days, but it's usually even if in Austria. Now in lost Kastrica, which is our largest adivada beach, it's about a six kilometer beach, but the synchronized mass nesting only happens of about less than a kilometer, right, So you have to envision once the adivada starts. It is that if somebody blows a whistle and all of a sudden, you have all these females that had already

been gathering right in front of the shore. They are all coming up together and start their nesting program. Right, it's like a little computer chip. It all kind of looks the same. So they come up, they start digging, they start laying their eggs and start camouflage, and they do the little really dense and then if and it's just they crawl over each other. It smells horrendous because they dig up old nests that have been decaying, so it's really really disgusting. They throw sand in your face

when you're trying to do something. If you forget your backpack somewhere, there's a good chance and one of the females just gets stucked with her flipper and just like

drags it down into the water. It's just insanity for like four or seven nights and then it's gone, and you wouldn't even know that this just happened if it wouldn't be for you know, usually the vultures and dogs that are digging up nests and you see all these you know, little white have pieces which are all egg pieces on the beach and it's still smells a little bit funny, but that is what a adi bada is. It's it's absolutely impressive. I would say, if you ever

get a chance to see one, definitely do it. Now that the rotten eggs are the decayed eggs that are being dug up. Now, are those the percentage of eggs that are just always lost generally, because I understand there's I've seen it broken down to where like there's a certain percentage of eggs they just never hatch and remain in the ground. And then you get into the survival

rates for each stage of the sea turtle. Yeah, okay, so there's with the adivada, it's it's a little bit more complicated, let's say that way, because you have so since it's happening every month and the nest usually needs about forty five to fifty five days to incubate, so that means if you are one of the very first females that are coming up in Ariivada number one, and let's say then this nest that is laid at that day has to actually survive to adivadas, right, it has

to survive all the females that are coming after her, and then in thirty days it has to survive the next adibada up until it has incubated enough to hatch. So those nests are not super likely to survive in certain times of the year, especially also because there is you know, there's a super high density of nests. So m it means it's it's um yeah, like one square meters has a ton of nest really way too many.

And so that means there is a lot of microbiota on the beach, kind of like I always think of a compost, because the sand, even on Audi Bada beaches is not really stand it's more like soil um And so you know, the the bacteria of course are affecting first of all the supply of oxygen that the eggs are having, and of course they also you know, infecting the eggs and just like you know, doing damage in other ways. And then the other thing is of course

that the heat. So unfortunately and a lot of the ali Bada beaches there are in areas where we already have a lot of problem with high temperatures because of climate change, and so the rising temperatures are pretty much lethal. UM. So that means the incubation temperatures way too high for

any egg to survive. So in Austria now um during dry season, these incub like just the hatching success of the nest that have survived till the end, it's only about fiftent I think, which is very very low, one five, so it's it's not very good. And then of course it's very difficult to quantify of how many eggs or nests from the initially late ones are actually even making it to that point. And I mean there's this one

thing that is also contributing to it. In Austinal at least there is um I think the world only legal egg harvests, so the village is allowed in the first seventy two hours of each adibada to harvest as many nests pretty much as they able to UM. They're justifying it with the fact that hey, those nests would have the lowest chance of survival anyways, So we're just kind of taking them and selling them to the market where people still want to buy secret likes. It is a

little bit controversial. I don't know if you want to go into that, but that is happening as well. So that means it of course if you would collect data on it, it doesn't it It is totally um, yeah, it's going because you don't know, you know what would be if they would lead those nests in the sand now in Costa Rica aside from the dogs that you mentioned, what what other mammals are getting in on the feast here? Yeah,

so in Austria now thinks it's pretty developed. It's really the dogs, the vultures, mammals, raccoons, quati which are the raccoon family more than anything. But we do have also an Aribada nesting beach which is in a national park in Santa Rosta and they actually have jag wires on man and the at vada there is just because also, I mean, just because you have the synchronized mass nesting, that doesn't mean all of you olive. Really turtles are

also engaging in that nesting behavior. There's some plasticity and some females nest solitarily, just like any other turtle species

as well. So I mean most beaches have olive really nesting year round, and almost every single night you have like one or two turtles, and so that olive really population is sustaining a pretty large jaguar a population in in in nun sat In Santa Lsa National Park, because you know, they can just patrol just like we do, the waterline up and down, and when the rest turtle coming out, they're not super fast on land, and the jaguar just grass them, drags them up to the vegetation

and then as you know, it depends if they have babies or not, but it takes about two to three days, so that turtles gone and then they start hunting again. M So all kinds of questions are running through my mind about this. So first of all, I apologize if you alluded to answers to either of these already. One is, do we have any idea what the queue is that triggers all of the turtles to come up onto the beach, because you said they gather offshore and then at some

point they all just start coming in waves. Do you do we know why that happens or what causes it. So I mean the why there is some hypotheses. One of them is a predator prevention strategy, so that you pretty much just as when you're nesting, you're trying to

overwhelm any potential predator. Uh. And then when the babies are hatching, since they're all hatching at the exact same time, right, so you have to think about half a million nests or even if it's just a few hundred thousand nests hatching at the same time, that means there's millions of millions of babies that just you know, scramble to make their way to to the ocean. So again, you know, if your predator, you can eat one or two or three or even more, but it's not going to be

all of them. So it's it's a pretty pretty good predator prevention strategy. So that's the why. Possibly the how that is actually a question that we have answered it to a certain degree. Um, so we know that it has something to do with the lunar cycle, so that is pretty much solid. We know that for decades already, and it depends a little bit on the synchronized mass

nesting beaches. So we have the Yeah, the majority of the beaches actually in Central America, So Mexico has a really large one, Costa Rica has a large one, and they're like smaller ones in in in Panama and in in Nicarago as well, And it depends a little bit of which beach we're talking about. What the lunar cycle is. For Ostinale, it is usually the week before new moon.

So that means that is a pretty good indicator that I would say probably of the time is giving you a good idea of when the stutifada is going to happen. Whereas in Escobia, I think it also happens sometimes like a week before full moon. So um, yeah, I mean exceptions always exist in Oustinal as well, but usually the

indicator is new moon. And then what we don't know though, is so you can see already, you know, let's say it's like about a week before new moon, and you see already in the wives, you know, thousands of turtles just swimming, the heads are bobbing up, and you just think, okay, okay, it's going to be happening every every moment now. But we don't know is what is the actual whistle that I've talked about, you know, what is it really that says it is now and not tomorrow and not yesterday,

but exactly now, and that we don't know. So they have been you know, kind of hypathities such as maybe, um, the females are having some type of pheromone that they're releasing and if it reaches a certain concentration that might be triggering it. But we don't really know. We really

don't know. The other thing I was wondering was, um, do we have any indication whether the incredible density of the nesting is Is that totally natural or when I see something like that, I would kind of wonder, is that's something that could be caused by I don't know, changes that are going on, like anything that humans do would drive that sort of incredible density. Do do we know anything about that? Yeah, well, it's not that we have like solid data, so I would say probably not

human cost. What I would say, though, is that we are really curious a scientist to study the evolution and the progression of Aribada nesting beaches because Austin now actually has a village for more than a hundred and thirty years, so that means there's really good historical data of you know, when they started to have an actual synchronized mass nesting, because it's not that they always had one, you know, so it started at some point um and it's still there.

But and that's more or less. My personal hypothesis is that I really think adri Bada beach choose a kind of getting going extinct at one point if you would let them take the natural core is because it is a solid it's a series over use of the beach, right, you have so much nest and you can see from the studies at austeonalis well like the hatching success just

over twenty thirty years, just like it's consistently decreasing. And if you would just let the beach do what it would usually do, or like the turtles to what they usually do, the hatching success right, which is probably be zero at one point, so there would be no next generation.

But I mean, I have the suspicion it's really hard to prove that the you know, the egg harvest is probably are it officially keeping that beach alive, you know, because it is raising the hatching success to at least the level there is still babies, but it's very low so that actually might be detrimental to the population later on because maybe they would have already looked for another beach right at this point. What makes me think that is is that we have two new beaches now that

weren't Atibada beaches before that. Now, in the past i would say six seven years, have started to have synchronized mass nest things and they are getting more and more. In the beginning it was like one per year, and then it was like three, and I think the last one was like almost eight synchronized mass nestings and one of them which is and it's getting bigger and bigger

as well. So I think that's you know, there's a natural life cycle to an auti bata, which which logically it makes sense, right if you if you over use something, then at one point there is nothing more left, like when you over use the soil for plants or else,

and so you have to look for something else. So yeah, it will be really interesting to kind of study that, you know, how new synchronized mass nesting beaches are developing, how long they really stay like that and until the turtles move on somewhere else, and also what triggers it, right, because if it would be really some kind of mechanism that is just going over the next generation. That would be I mean Olive Ridley's reach sexual maturity with about

fifteen to twenty five years. So that's a lot like feedback cycle, you know too if you think about it's so maybe it's something else. So can you explain how temperature plays a role in the development of sea turtle eggs and then and then how does climate change impact this process? Yeah, so temperature in the life of sea turtles is super important, as we already talked about it. You know, they needed to warm up their body. But the uther cool thing is that the sex of sea

turtles is determined by the incubation temperature. So that means they do not have sex chromosomes as we humans have for example, So you know usually it's x x and you become female biologically, or it's x y and you're male biologically. And in sea turtles is actually the second third of the incubation time. That's where higher temperatures are leading to more females gradually. Of course, it's not like a switch and it's all females or males, and cooler

temperatures are leading to more males. So in English at least they have this you know, hot chicks and cool dudes, and if you want to remember how that is. Interestingly though, it is not the same in all turtles, since turtles it's exactly that, but there's other turtle species, freshwater turtles and tortoises that actually sometimes have two peaks. So it's like, you know, kind of middle temperature produces more males and

like really cool and really hot temperatuicuely to females. There's all kinds of variation within that group of turtles, but the anti turtles, it is that, and that of course means nowadays, where we are having rising temperatures because of climate change, in a lot of places, we are overproducing females. So there's beaches where we have pretty much almost d females that we're producing. So there's some status. It really depends on which region you're looking at and what species.

But that is like you know, one male to nine females, or even worse worst case scenarios than that, which might not be a problem right now because like I said, it takes a while till they reach sexual maturity, but one they have reached sexual maturity and if population sizes are already small, it might be just not enough males around to fertilize the females and eggs. So that is

really concerning UM. And in that sense, and some of the you know, conservation measures that we have, as for example, that we're shading our nests in order to you know, artificially increase the amount of males that we're producing, just to counteract a little bit those those impacts that climate change. UM. Yeah, it's causing. UM. I had a question. I want to come back to something you said earlier about the resiliency of sea turtles and you mentioned mentioned like missing flippers

and injuries that that they have survived. I was thinking about this recently because I got to snorkle in in now among some green sea turtles and I got to observe them there, and there was one in particular, and you know it was I kept seeing it because it had a number tag on its shell and it was missing a front flipper. And every time I would see it, I would I would marvel at it because I and

then I would ask questions in my head. How I was wondering, like, this is a turtle that has that has been injured and then has been re released or is this just how resilient they are that it could sustain an injury like this survive And you know, I mean how does I guess? They just have questions about just just how they managed that. It seems like I know, if I lost a limb in the ocean, I would just be dead. Uh, how does the sea turtle pull

it off? Yeah? So I think they have incredible healing powers. So just like what I've seen. For example, I remember one particular leather bag that came with absolutely horrible cuts from she must have gotten somehow entangled in fisher nets. Luckily she was freed, maybe by the fisherman themselves, but it was just a nasty cut all across, like the soft part of her shoulders. It was bleeding, it was in facted. She was really smelling as well. It was

pretty disgusting. And um, so sea turtles don't nest just once proced us. They usually nest, you know, in the case of leather bags on average about five to seven times and have very distinct rensting intervals. So I know in other bags it's about ten days. So that means

I knew already. Okay, you know, she will come back hopefully, and so you know the next time she came back, I kind of had some antibiotic appointment that I was, you know, trying and had like an antibotic pill that I just broke open and tried to like clean it a little bit. Um. But the interesting thing was really within the ten days that she came back, the wound

already had pretty much clothes. I mean, it was just like, you know, pretty deep, and you could see, you know, it was like through the fat layer and you could see things that I, I think you're not supposed to be seeing. Um, Yeah, And it is just so impressive of how quickly in ten days, you know, the whole thing had already pretty much closed. And yeah, she had an ugly scar, but she's definitely able to to live or in the other Like another example is that I

saw a female that came up onto the beach. So I caught her in the process of just walking up on the beach and she was dragging something behind her and you know, it looked like fishing net, but I wasn't sure, so I kind of went closer, switched on my light and what I saw I was, Yes, it was fishing net, but she also pretty much dragged her dead leg that was literally just hanging on on like one ligament, totally blown up, and oh, I mean the whole net, like the whole fishing I had already cut

through the entire bone um, and she was pulling, you know, this dead leg on that ligament and there's like a huge bulk of fishing line behind her and she was still nesting. I mean, I mean, this is just mind blowing, right if you think about it, It's just like, Okay, she's probably in pain, she is in the process of losing an entire flipper, but this urge to come onto the beach to still reproduced is so big. And I'm pretty sure that she survived, quite honestly, because I mean,

what Scott it. I had already closed, so I just kind of the fishing gear um. And then you know, I could tell that she kind of flinched when I was trying to touch the one ligament. So what I did is because I didn't have anything, you know, I didn't want to cut through it, so I just took like one little piece of fishing eye and just like pretty much did a tourney catch, just like you know, try to find it off from all but supplying Oubrey would just fall off eventually. But yeah, it gets scory.

One of the things I saw when we were coming in here. I know you've talked before about the the incident with the straw and the turtles nose, but one of the ones I saw was a a video you had uploaded where you were trying to remove a fishing net from a turtle's neck and that it had cut in all around the neck. I think was it a leather back or um that was an olive red lame as well. Yeah, it was exactly in front of us, you now, so that one of those synchronized mass inesting beaches.

And yeah, that wasn't very typical. I mean, you know, I don't always have the chance to film everything that we see because you know, sometimes for me it's more important to actually you know, release them and not thinking about it. They can obously filment um. But yeah, that's a very typical side unfortunately. I mean this one was a little bit worse because it was around her neck. A lot of times it's you know, it's the flippers, um.

But yeah, I mean usually what all you can do is like you know, relief what she has and then just hope that the wounds will pretty much heal themselves, which usually they do um because it's even not that

easy to kill a turtle. So we had another case where I was called in UM and there was a turtle on the beach that had been what we don't know what came first, but dogs were around her, had pretty much attacked her, had eaten into her body cavity, so from you know when you have the heads and the shell, so like the soft pipe is the shoulder pipe, and so the dogs had just taken out of it. She was in a really bad shape, like way worse

than Yeah. I did not think, Okay, I can just throw her in the water and she's going to be fine. So I contacted the vets that is close by, But of course the veterinarians are usually not specialized in reptiles, so reptiles are very specific. Which even when we talked about you know, like in the aftermath of turtle straw videos like why didn't you take it to a vet?

Why didn't you like anesthesize the turtles? It is actually not that easy and pretty dangerous to anesthesize the reptile because the actual therm and like how the metabolism works. More times than not, you might actually end up killing them. So you know, um, you have to really find a vet that knows how to dose everything to not kill them. And most of the times they would also opt to not do it and rather do whatever they need to do um without yeah, tranquilizing or anesthesizing the animal, just

because it is so dangerous. And then of course, you know, you go to the vets that is actualized for cats and dogs and you're like kind of like, hey, I have this tea turtle and he was like, yeah, that

is like, oh god, she needs to be euthanized. And then it was really interesting because we had to look up in the internet how to euthanize the turtle and it is really I mean m First of all, it's you can use a toxine that we didn't have at hand, so we had to find pretty much like other ways of how we could you know, humanely euthanize that turtle because I had seen it already when poachers, um, you know, try to to take the meat of turtles or the eggs that are still in in inside of the overducts.

They a lot of times don't even bother killing the turtles. So they hack off the flippers and then they kind of cut out the plastron, you know, the belly pipe and just opened the turtle. And that turtles fully conscious in a life. And I have seen turtles that had literally no organs left anymore besides the lung and the heart because the meat was taken, the export taken, and the hat was still beating. I mean, it's it's absolutely it's it's it's really really sad and really impacting to

see that. So we had this turtle we needed to euthanize, and I mean the only way of how. When I was talking to two best we're like, well, you have to drill a hole into her head and you make sure that you really hit the brand as quickly as possible so you know, she goes quickly and doesn't feel anything anymore. So it was a little bit traumatizing for

all of us, I can tell you that. But yeah, because we had to find, like, you know, a drill somewhere, it was, Yeah, it was not a dosn't thing that we we had to do them, but it shows you a lot about resilience and also you know of how they work and how they yeah not die, I guess that quickly. So you're talking about the the idea of the sea turtle being attacked by dogs, um or even by humans. It makes me realize the question that apologies

if this is a very dumb question. So we have experience with some terrestrial turtles like the box turtle that can fully retract inside the shell. Is that not Is there any kind of retraction defensive capability and sea turtles or can they partially do that or not at all? Or what? This is a really good question. I don't think it's a dumb question at all, because it's one of the most identifying features of sea turtles that they

can not retract the limbs into the shell. So they can kind of pull their head in a little bit like in the case of example, green turtles um, but not really. So it's not you know, like this typical image that you have where they just like disappear into their shell. They can't. So the reason of why that is is, first of all, they have their shell has become very streamlined in in the course of evolution, so they're like super hydrodynamic um which also decreases the space

inside of the shell. If you think about like these high domed tortoises for example that we have on land. And then the other thing is is that the main locomotive, like the own main engine, are the front flippers, right, so they have you know, they it's almost looks like like an airplane. The why how they like kind of go through the water or like flying like birds that are kind of flapping, you know, their power strokes with

both flippers. But that means they're um that chest muscles have grown so large that they have taken up a lot more space than in other turtles. And that is also one of the reasons that they can't retract it into their shell anymore. And now in terms of just sort of the general temperament of the sea turtle, um, do you do you find that like different sea turtle species or even individuals have different demeanors or some shire around human divers or snorkelers for example. Yeah, I mean

there's definitely a difference between species. So olive redleys and leather bags are seldom ly face, especially if we're talking about mass nesting turtles. So if you have solitary nesting turtles a little bit more skittish. Um. But the leather bags and olive redleys are really kind of like, I don't care so you can handle them while they're nesting.

So they're in this like you know, supposed to be nesting trends that really kind of you know, they're only concentrating of dropping their eggs and and and anything that happens around them, they really don't seem to notice. But in the case of hawk spills and greens, both of those turtle species as super skittish, so it comes you know, even when they come up, even when they're already dropping the eggs, which you know supposedly there in the nesting trends.

The protocols that we have in place usually means, okay, if you're not able to you know, really carefully collect eggs or whatever, better, don't touch them. Let they do their thing, and then we're going to collect the data so you know, we don't disturb the actual egg laying process. And then of course within individuals. UM, when we were doing especially the olive redly sampling, I always felt that smaller turtles were way more feisty than like the big

big ones. Um. Maybe it had something to do with you know, being more edgile because you were smaller. I don't know, it's sometimes had seemed to have something to do of how high the temperatures were. So you know, if you grab a turtle that maybe has just woken up and hadn't had time to really go to the surface and sun basketball to really kind of wake up and get their metabolism going, um, there might be a

little bit more sluggish. Then if you have one turtle that has been already you know, absorbed all the heat energy and the muscles are all ready for action, and then they start fighting you when you have them on the boat. Now, I realized there's a lot to unpack with this question, and I think we've touched on it a little bit at least already in the conversation. But what are the biggest threats to see turtles today and and and what is the current state of turtle conservation?

What are the most important things we we are doing to help them and can do to help them? Yeah, so first up, I think we have to say very clearly that all sevency turtle species are considered endangered in

one shape or form. I mean this like you know the I U C N that is um cur writing the red list of endangered species as having certain categories and different sea turtles species, and even different within the species, different populations have sometimes different status is but I think as a generalizing term, they are all somehow endangered um nowadays. And then if we think about the threats, it's just

it's not just one. I think it's pretty much the exact same ones that when we talk about our ocean in general, it's exactly the same things that are also endangering sea turtles. So, of course the biggie is climate change. So we already talked about temperatures that are super important to sea turtles, and so rising temperatures are creating you know,

issues with the yeah, overproduction of females. But the other biggie is also um sea level rice, so we have nesting habitat that is disappearing because sea levels are rising and nesting beaches are disappearing. Then the big category that is next is of course ocean pollution, and there we can talk about oil spills that are happening way too frequently and it's not always at the press reports about it.

We can talk about the not so visible pollution through fertilizers and pesticides that comes from our agriculture, agricultural activities on land that leads to diseases such as fiber public puloma, which is kind of a virus disease that causes really crazy tumors, and sea turtles um. Then of course plastic pollution, So every single species of sea turtles has been documented to have ingested plastic already. Um A lot of times when we have dead turtles, we cut them open, they're

just full of plastic. Interesting fact, the first ingestion of plastic and sea turtles was actually found in letter backs. So the first paper that was published on that was published in the nineteen eighties, and then the same author actually went back to all records from like I think the six season seventies to see for evidence if somebody else had been recording plastic, and they did find that even before that time, people had already found plastic in

in in sea turtles, in leather bags specifically. And then the other thing, of course, is over exploitation. So in many, many, many developing countries in Asia, Africa, South America, Central America, people still take sea turtle eggs because they believe either they're better than chicken eggs or they believe it's a type of natural Viagraah, So older men try to increase their sex drive by yeah, by by eating sea turtle eggs. But there's also still a culture around consuming sea turtle meat,

especially the meat of green turtles lets. You know, dates back many many centuries to sailors and other seafares that love taking turtles because they're just there's amazing protein source and turtles don't need much so they don't need much water, they don't need much food, but to keep them alive sometimes you can tie them outside of the boat and when you need one, you just slaughter them and then

you have fresh meat. And then um, the other one is the in the exploitation range is the sea turtles shell trap, which is affecting especially hawks bill turtles, so tortoise shell I think you might have seen the pattern. Um yeah, it's for for jewelry, for or for forum for glasses, for reading glasses and els. Um. Yeah, that's also long history. And then of course the other biggie

is um over fishing. So industrial fishing just doesn't just you know, catch target species, but has an incredible amount of bycatch what we call incidental takes. So it's species that were not meant to be fished, but end up

in those nets or on those lines as well. And since sea turtles, like I said, already need to breathe air um, they're actually sometimes a lot of times not able to surface and drown on those nets and and we it's really it's an overwhelming number of turtles that die every single year in fishing operations, and it is really sad, especially when you think about over exploitation it needs in turtle shell and also in in um in the fishing lines. Is that you know, there is a

very low chance for babies to survive. But once you've reached a certain size as a sea turtle, there's really not that many natural predators. And since it takes such a long time for a seaturtle to reach sexual maturity, each individual is so valuable to the population. And it's exactly those individuals that die, you know, when you want to have meat, when you want to have turtle shell,

or if you have bycatch. Now, when you mentioned the effects of of plastics on sea turtles, with the human activity that causes this primarily be the high volume use of single use plastics or other things too, or what do you think is the you know, the day to day human activity that contributes most to that in the ocean. I think there's a lot of misconception about how plastic, first of all, ends up in our ocean and how

plastic waste is created. It is very overwhelming of how much tons of plastic we are having each year, and it's increasing exponentially. So in just two thousand and fifteen, which is already six years back, we were already produced between four hundred and five hundred million metric tons of of of plastic each year, which good is mainly for food wrapping and packaging, and about forty are produced only

for single use. Right, So you have this lyrical product plastic that can last for hundreds of years, and you're using it for the use of like literary seconds or minutes, and a lot of times, especially those single use plastics, are first of all, not recyclable at all, because there're two lights in the way of how you know, recycling is processed. But even if they were recycling recyclable, the reality is that only about four to nine percent of

the plastic really gets recycled. So, you know, a lot of people feel good because it's like, hey, I recycle I'm not back, you know, I dispose of my trash responsibly. But the problem is most developing, as most developed countries are actually sending their plastic trash to developing countries. So the US, Europe, European countries, we're are sending our trash to Asia. Used to send it to China, but now it's going to Indonesia, to Malaysia, to other places which

have not a great waste management program. And you know, since so little is really like you know, recyclable, it

will end up in our oceans anyways. Right, So even you at home separated and you felt good about yourself because you did a good job, but in the end it will end up in landfills that might not be so well managed, even within the U. S. If you just think about you know, hurricanes, so you have an open landfill, you know, the next hurricane that kind of goes through, what do you think it's going to happen

to your trash? You know, it's going to be ending up in the waterways, and eventually it will also end up in the ocean. So it's not just you know, cruise boats or container ships that are creating all the plastic trash or the people that visit the beaches and leave their trash behind. No, it's every single person in the world that is contributing to the issue. I want to make that very clear, because that's always the easy way out. But where people are listening, well, I'm not

part of the problem. We're all part of the problem. And I think the other problem is it's like the convenience people are just so used to kind of rapid consumption of food and everything and beverages and um in the pandemic, now, you know, just the amount of takeout that has been probably um yeah, perpetuated because you know, everybody's at home and wants to still eat something from

a restaurant. And so the style form containers, the plastic bottles, the plastic cups, the plastic cutlery, all of that needs to go somewhere, right, and uh yeah, it usually doesn't get recycled, and it will somehow end up in our environment in one way or another. So that means the only thing that we can really do is is really try to reduce our use of plastic as much as we can. And I'm not trying to say, you know, oh, we need all to be like completely plastic free, because

that is it's a utopia that is not possible. I mean my computer that I'm using to speak to you right now, the you know certain things that I use for my science doctors that are using the syringer. It's just like, there's certain advantages you know of plastic that I think are super important for us as a species as well. But do we really need to use plastic for like, um, you know, to drink out of a cup where we don't even need, ah, you know, a

straw in the first place. If if we're able to bloody people, we can just drink out of the cup. Or you know, if you're getting tag out, um and you have all your silver wet home, why do you need to get plastic cutler right? It's just it's so easy. I get it because you don't have to wash it up, you just throw it out. But there is a price to it, you know, there's always a price that somebody has to pay the price, and a lot of times, unfortunately it's the wildlife, um that is praying the price

and not us. Is there anything else that you think would be really important to hit before we wrap up here?

Very important? I don't know. I just you know, want to motivate people to really understand that there is a certain degree that we have a there's a degree of power that we have as consumer, right, So I do not want to try to fool you into believing that the consumers are the ones that are really, you know, having to carry all the responsibility for for example, of plastic pollution, it's really the large companies that are creating

most of our our problem. But we can vote with our decision, like with our choices, right, So if if you spend your money with a certain company, you're voting for that money quite literally. So I just think we need to be more conscious about how we're spending our money. And I just always try to convince people just to consume less, just buy less crap, because it's just like, you know, I get it. Capitalism is trying to make you buy more and more and tries to, you know,

make you believe that you need this newest thing. But it's it's you know, it's not true. It really isn't true. And I think we just need to be a lotte more conscientious of of our consumer behavior and then we just become better consumers. I think. All right, well, Christine thanks so much for chatting with us today and uh sharing all this great information about about about sea turtles.

I feel like I learned to learned so much today about the about the seven sea turtles we still have as well as their you know, their their current plight. So I guess what one thing to ask would be if anyone out there listening to this, if they want to follow you and your work online, where can they go to do so? Where do you like to send people? Yeah, I'm pretty active on Instagram, so I'm sea turtle biologists.

Very easy if you guys want to check out my Instagram, I'm trying to create content about you know, sea turtles and about plastic pollution and just giving ideas of of of what's going on out in the field where I am. And that's definitely one way. And yeah, if you guys want to support my work, UM there is an app called milky Wire where you can become monthly supporters I think starting at like about three or five dollars, so literally just like as if you would invite me to

coffee each month. And that is a huge difference because that is pretty much how we sustain our conservation efforts UM, which is paying my guys that are patrolling the beaches trying to keep the turtles safe from poachers and make sure that the babies have a good chance of, you know, having a good start in life. Yeah. I think that's probably the easiest way of connecting with me. Excellent, all right, Well, well again again, thanks so much for taking time out

of your day to chat with us. This has been great. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. That's fun nerding out about turtles. All right. Thanks once more to Christine Figuring for taking time out of her day to just chat with us about sea turtles and sea turtle conservation. Uh that this was a real blast. And if you would like to to follow her on social media, uh, these are a few of the places you can end just in general on the internet. Here a few places

you can go on Instagram. Uh, she is a sea turtle biologist. One word on Facebook, it is c F. Figener. That's f I g g e n e R. And on Twitter, uh, she is Chris Figners, So that's Chris C h R I S f I g g e n e R. And you can also go to her website which is Sea Turtle Biologist dot com and then the Coasts organization uh coasts dot c r on is the Instagram tag and you can uh that one is

also connected to uh DR Figener's Facebook account. We're gonna go and close it out there, but if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find them in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed with core science and culture episodes publishing on Tuesdays and Thursday's, Artifact episode on Wednesday, listener mail on Monday, and on Friday's we do a little weird house cinema. That's our time to set the science aside and just focus on a weird movie. Huge thanks as

always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. The Child Went By a movie