leatherback sea turtles

Researchers at the University of Swansea in Britain recently published a study in the British Journal of Experimental Biology with an explanation of the mysterious deep diving behavior of leatherback sea turtles. Sea turtles spend most of their time in shallow surface waters, where they eat and breed, but occasionally they will make a break toward the bottom of the ocean and dive to more than ¾ of a mile below the surface of the water.

I'm intrigued by an article yesterday in National Geographic News about the ways scientists are intervening to protect Pacific leatherback sea turtles in the face of global warming.

The folks over at the Outside magazine blog clued me into the news yesterday about new leatherback sea turtle data from Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station.They tracked 46 turtles on their migratory route, and as it turns out, the leatherbacks swam a very specific path, thousands of miles out to an area near the Galapagos known as the South Pacific Gyre -- before returning to Costa Rica to nest.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has some sad news: the Caribbean monk seal is extinct. The last confirmed sighting of the seal was in 1952, and it's the first type of seal to go extinct from human causes. Perhaps this will be a wake-up call to protect the remaining Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals, both of which are endangered and at risk of extinction.