Why do turtles return to their birthplace to lay ? episode 2

And yes, here we go for a new mission. One would think that at the end of the fourth one is blasé, one is bored. But a mission in Les Eparses is an eternal adventure, a new human experience, a new challenge. We leave the eyes full of dreams, we come back the skin full of salt, burnished with a merciless sun, and eyes full of hope for the future of the planet, a healthy planet, pure, simple and beautiful where we men could live in harmony and in respect of a welcoming and abundant nature.

A mission on Antsiva, it is also and above all a new human adventure, a place of exchange, of listening, without prejudices, a place of sympathy, of jokes, of emotions, of admiration ... like this tiger shark of 4 meters evolving peacefully between the two appendices, or this dance of the turtles in reproduction in the turquoise water, at the foot of the schooner, hard reality of a reproduction where the battle of the males for the female is done with rage, but probably passion too ...
Then a mission in scattered Antsiva, it is simply an enchantment, an excessive dream that is transformed into reality, communion of nature and man who reveals without deviation our nature. How to be jaded faced with this existing reality? So stay humble in the face of these experiences, and enjoy every moment as if it were the last.

... and the scientist

Before embarking, a sentence was trotting in my head, especially as a head of mission: "Extremely dense mission Glorious 2009, will have to manage ...". And that's what we've done.
First on the green turtles in reproduction, the species Chelonia mydas. The aim of this first part is to understand how marine turtles manage to find their birthplace - a bit like salmon - to deposit eggs, the only ones guaranteeing the survival of the species. Magnetic fields, smell? No answer for the moment. To unravel the mystery, we captured 12 turtles on the beach during the laying phase and on which we put Argos tags to follow their journeys on the high seas; some with magnets, others not, the aim being to see if the magnetic fields blur their sense of orientation when moved at sea. The first results seem to indicate that no ... it will be necessary to inject the data in powerful software to confirm these first results.

Then, on the immature tortoises, which find in Glorious waters, a perfect habitat of development. The goal of this mission was to capture 50 immature green turtles, tag them, weigh them, and photograph them.
The advantage of such an approach is to be able to study their rate of attendance, their residence and growth time. Do they stay 1 year, 5 years on these sites? Do they grow to 1 cm per year? From 10? These are all questions that are fundamental for putting in place effective management plans to protect these species in danger. We were able to capture 42 green turtles, and highlighted that the growth rate was of the order of 1.5cm per year and that some had been there since 2005 ... 4 years.

Finally, the last part was about the fish: are there links between some species found Glorious and these same species in Mayotte? In the meeting ?
To do this, the goal was to capture 50 fish from 3 different species for genetic samples. The genetic tool is a powerful tool for understanding the links that can exist between populations. In this context, it will enable us to understand to what extent the marine protected areas of the South West Indian Ocean are linked - or not, to each other.
This type of response will allow us to highlight whether the current structure of the network of marine areas of the South West Indian Ocean is well constituted or whether it is necessary to create new ones to refine the mesh and optimize protection. marine resources.