Why Canada Matters to the World’s Largest Sea Turtle

0:00 One of the largest sea turtles on Earth travels thousands of kilometers every year to visit Canada, and it comes here for one reason, jellyfish. This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekday ocean news update. If you care about staying informed on the ocean every single weekday, hit that follow button right now on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss tomorrow's episode. We're gonna be talking about one of my favorite things to look at when I'm on the coastal shores of any ocean, are tide pools, especially off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, where you get the biggest tides in the world, and you get to see tide pools along there. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Hit that follow button so you don't miss tomorrow's episode. But today, we're answering a question that sounds a little strange. Why would a giant sea turtle leave warm tropical waters and travel all the way to the cold North Atlantic?

0:47 That's the big question, and the answer tells us a lot about why cold water ecosystems are so special. So meet the leatherback sea turtle, the largest sea turtle on Earth. Unlike any other sea turtles, leatherbacks don't have a hard shell. Instead, they have a flexible leathery back, so hence the name leatherback sea turtle. They can grow over six feet long, and they can weigh hundreds of kilograms, and they are built for long-distance travel. Some leatherback sea turtles cross entire ocean basins, and that's not an exaggeration. Entire oceans. Yet every summer, some of them arrive in the Atlantic Canadian waters, including waters off Nova Scotia.

1:28 Why? Well, because they're hungry. Most people get excited about jellyfish. Leatherbacks definitely get excited about jellyfish. To a leatherback sea turtle, a jellyfish bloom is like finding an all-you-can-eat buffet at a Vegas casino. And Atlantic Canada often provides exactly that. A 2020 study led by Bailey Nordstrom found that leatherback sea turtle movements are closely linked to availability of jellyfish. In other words, the sea turtles are following food. Now, this is not the only animal that we saw doing this. We heard about the mola mola doing the same thing on Monday's episode. And these guys aren't just wandering. They're actually searching for these food, and they're very good at it.

2:09 Cold water ecosystems support enormous productivity. Nutrients fuel plankton growth. Plankton helps support jellyfish. Jellyfish helps support the leatherbacks. It's one giant chain of connections. And the leatherback sits near the top of that food chain. What's amazing to me and a lot of other people is that many people don't associate cold oceans with abundance. They imagine cold water as empty water. But that's not what the animals see. Whales come here to feed, seabirds come here to feed, ocean sunfish come here to feed, as we learned on Monday, and leatherbacks come here to feed. They're all responding to the same thing. Food. It's what a lot of people are driven by.

2:51 It's food. Now, speaking of food, if you are coming here to get that food information on oceans, I want you to hit that follow button right now. I want you to really understand how much information we're giving to you every weekday. You hit that follow button, you'll get it every weekday in your new episode list. And by the way, I'm working on a plan. For those of you who want just the interviews, you can have the interviews in your new inbox, like your new episodes list. I'll work on a solution for that so you can have two feeds. If you want the daily episodes as well, or if you just want the interview. I've heard some back from some people, and it's kinda clogging up their feed, which I understand, totally fine. If you just want some of the interviews, we'll working on a system to do that for you guys that's not gonna break the bank and start another podcast for me.

3:36 In the meantime, just follow this and we'll come probably within a week or two. I'll have a solution. All right, now let's get back to the episode. So scientists have recently learned even more about what these leatherbacks are doing when they arrive here. It's pretty interesting. A twenty twenty-three study led by Amélie Migneaux used high-resolution tracking data and found that leatherbacks perform complex diving behaviors while feeding in Canadian waters. The turtles aren't just drifting around. They're actually hunting. They're diving. They're searching. They're feeding. And then repeating the process again and again to get as many jellyfish as possible. That means Atlantic Canada isn't just a stopover, it's a destination. And like, to be honest, growing up in Canada, I did not expect sea turtles to come here for a destination.

4:19 I just thought every once in a while they pop up, maybe they just navigate or they follow maybe some jellyfish in here. But now we know that these leatherback sea turtles are here, like, quite often. It's not only just a destination, it's one of the most important feeding grounds these turtles visit. And that's what I love about this story. When people think about sea turtles, they picture tropical beaches. But one of the world's most impressive sea turtles depends on cold water systems for part of its survival. And that's a pretty good reminder that incredible wildlife exists far beyond the tropics. And cold water places are not empty places. These cold water oceans are productive. They're destinations worth traveling thousands of kilometers to reach in order to get food.

5:00 And every summer, leatherback sea turtles prove it. Now, just because it's cold water doesn't mean you're not gonna see some amazing animals. So far we talked about giant leatherback sea turtles, we talked about the blue sharks, and we talked about the mola mola. And tomorrow we're gonna talk about maybe some smaller organisms in tide pools. And something that I love to do along the coastline when the tide goes out, you're able to see all these things. And I've seen these in tropical areas, I've seen these in cold water, temperate areas, and they're just wonderful every single time. But that's something that I remember anytime I go on the East Coast, is you get to see these tide pools, and you get to see all these wonderful animals, which we're gonna talk about tomorrow. So hit that follow button so that you can get tomorrow's episode on tide pools.

5:41 And you'll hear Friday's interview with my coworker at Pisces Oceans, Kristi Burnett, who's gonna talk about growing up along Nova Scotia shores and what it was like to really enjoy cold water species above and below the ocean surface. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. If you wanna get ahold of me, you can do so. Just go to the show notes. All my socials are there. You can DM me on Instagram, is where I probably respond. That and TikTok I probably respond the most. But, yeah, get ahold of me. I'd love to continue this conversation. This has been another wonderful episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.