Dammit Jim!

When I was writing up the last post on the Great Turtle Race, I came across this Wikipedia page that has details on every Colbert report ever (what doesn’t Wikipedia have?). It included this quote on Stephen Colbert’s leatherback:

Stephen is unhappy at the fact that Stephanie Colburtle The Turtle did not win The Great Turtle Race, after being bested by another turtle named Billy. He claims Billy is a male, and demands a re-race. (After explaining that one can tell the sex of a turtle by the concavity of its plastron, Stephen says that he checks the plastron on “all [his] dates, and if it’s not concave, [he is] outta there.” However, a concave plastron denotes a male turtle.)

Now I’m not totally sure the concave plastron bit works with leatherbacks since they’re more barrel-shaped than turtle-shaped but I guess it’s possible. But on the topic, I just thought I’d share a couple tips for determining leatherback sex.

First, is it on a beach? If so, it’s female. Healthy male leatherbacks never return to land after their initial crawl from the nest to the ocean. That makes research programs that catch turtles at sea the only way to look at male leatherbacks.

Second, does it have a long tail that trails well behind the shell? Then it’s a male. Leatherbacks (and other sea turtles) store their penis in their tail. The tails of female turtles barely extend past their shell. The tails of male turtles, shall we say, hang low and wobble to and fro. I couldn’t dig up a picture of a male leatherback but here’s a picture of a male green sea turtle tail (from seaturtle.org courtesy of Daha Diew and Alain Gibudi) that should give an idea (that’s its rear flippers in the left edge of the picture).

And now you know.

I’m a bit late on this one (I don’t know how I managed to miss it since I had to put the data together) but National Geographic and Conservation International had a Great Turtle Race with a bunch of leatherback turtles tagged by my old adviser. They took data from turtle tracked from Nova Scotia to South America and had a big two-week event watching which turtle reached the Caribbean first. They have a pretty cool animation of the satellite tracking (although of course not quite as good as mine) and some cute leatherback artwork (complete with leathery back instead of shell, although why are they green?).

That site also has the first leatherback game I’ve ever seen. The artist did a really good job since the view is pretty much identical to the view we get from a shoulder mounted turtleCam. Unfortunately, the game turtle handles like a tank which really doesn’t do justice to the maneuvering ability of leatherbacks. They’re huge animals but in the water they’re really quite graceful and they can turn on a dime (as I quickly found out when we were trying to catch them).

Anyway, it looks like the turtle named Backspacer (it’s weird to see all the interesting names since we always call the turtles by their tag ID number), sponsored by Pearl Jam, yes that Pearl Jam, won the race. Turtle Cali won the diving portion of the race and received an Iron Turtle Award. Here’s a nice post-race summary and also Olympic swimmer (and turtle coach) Jason Lezak’s take on it. It’s great to see so much public interest in leatherback turtle tracking and National Geographic and Conservation International did a great job promoting and running the event.

There’s a new stories about a “rare giant sea turtle” being caught and eaten in the Gaza Strip going around now. I dug up a video for it and it’s definitely a leatherback so I figured I’d throw in my two cents since I just posted about leatherback turtles.

Here’s the video. Sorry if there’s an advertisement in front of it. I’m not making anything from it but it was the only source I could find. They do show the turtle being killed so it’s not really fun to watch.

A few corrections to the video first, it’s not “thought” to be a leatherback. There’s no mistaking a leatherback for any other turtle. That’s a leatherback. The fisherman says it’s 600-700 kilograms. I’m never good at estimating weights but the biggest one weighed in Canada so far was just a bit above 600 kilograms and that one looks on the small side so probably less than 400 kilograms (still a big animal though).

I thought it was odd they were talking about eating the meat since I’d often heard that leatherback flesh is poisonous but I can’t find a good citation for that and there do seem to be substinence fisheries for them so I guess leatherbacks are either edible or only occasionally poisonous. Also, I’d heard of people eating the eggs for ‘viagra’ effects but never the blood or the whole ailing children thing. I’m not sure what conditions are like in Gaza but if they’re not killing the turtle for necessary food, it really seem like a shame to kill an endangered species for bogus penis enhancement.

Also the fisherman says the turtle ruined a bunch of fishing gear. This is actually a common problem with leatherbacks. They don’t seem to have a way to reverse directions. So if they run into a net or even a loose rope in the water, they can easily become entangled. This can often end badly when the loops get caught around their neck and choke them or the tide rises while the ropes hold them underwater (or people decide to drag the turtle ashore and drink its blood to improve their sex lives).

In more encouraging news, the Reuters article ends with this:

A smaller Leatherback was caught off the Gaza coast last month but the turtle was released after fishermen discovered it carried a tag classifying it as an endangered species.

Thanks to William F. Landell for pointing this story out in the comments.