Hey, I'm Floor Lichtman and you're listening to Science Friday.
It seems like the world is moving ever faster, with news alerts that change from one hour
to the next.
“So we decided it might be a good idea to focus on some slow moving stories.”
Coming out of his shell is sci-fi chief turtle and tortoise correspondent, Charles Berquist. Welcome. Hey, Floor. You have been on the glacial turtle turtle beat at sci-fi for over a decade.
I understand. Yeah. I mean, this started in 2012 when Lonesome George, the famous Galapagos tortoise died. He'd been kind of a conservation icon as the last of a lot.
So I ended up producing this memorial obituary segment, which involved getting a live
satphone conversation between Ira and the late tortoise conservationist Linda Kaio from the Galapagos. Amazing. I should not have followed up on that. In 2020, some genetics analysis led researchers to believe that George's line may not be
completely lost. So that's good news. I love that. Good news already.
“Can we before we get going, please tell me the difference between a turtle and a tortoise?”
Okay. So all tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. Tortises are specifically a subset of turtles that are primarily land-welling, whereas turtles can include both aquatic and not aquatic species. Okay.
So back to the Galapagos. This year, there are some exciting developments in tortoise conservation. Yeah. So not Lonesome George, but another subspecies of Galapagos tortoise. This one's from Floriana Island.
So there's 13 major islands in the Galapagos and about the same number of distinct tortoise subspecies across those islands. This is on Floriana had been pretty much wiped out. But earlier this year, conservationists released 158 young tortoises onto the island. I had a chance to talk with Penny Becker.
She's CEO of the group Island conservation that was one of the partners in this big release effort. She told me a kind of astonishing story about what happened to the Floriana tortoise on the island, which involved both invasive species and settlers who came. The tortoises were directly utilized by the settlers and by all the sailors.
I've heard that they were eaten as food sources. They were also used the stories I've heard they were used as balanced for ships, like live tortoises on where you'd last in that way. The couldn't find a rock. I don't know, but that actually turned out to potentially be one of the reasons why we
have tortoises today. The sort of myth story is that the reason that we have the genetics of the Floriana tortoises at all is because someone picked up these tortoises and put them on a ship. Then they took them off the ship and put them on another island. The whole reason we had tortoises might be because they were utilizing them on these ships
and then offloaded them as cargo onto another island. These offloaded tortoises, how close do we think they are to the true original Floriana tortoises? This is one of those things where both science and good luck came together so that we have Floriana tortoises today.
Just so happens that there are some caves on Floriana where there were tortoise remains that were there which preserved the DNA of those species.
“That's the only way we know what the true genetics and DNA of Floriana tortoises were like.”
Then as our long-term partners and scientists that we are looking at tortoises across all the islands, they thought, hey, these tortoises on this other island that looks like there are different types. What's that all about? They started doing some genetic analyses and were able to match a few of the individuals
that they discovered on this other island to the genetics of the Floriana tortoises. We believe that there were some Floriana tortoises that were pretty pure bread on this other island that were then brought into captivity and then interbred with a few other tortoises but in a way that tried to maintain as much of those genes of the Floriana population as you could and that's what we have today.
Amazing.
First of all, I love the excitement in Pennybecker's voice.
You can hear it as she's talking but it sounds like they took this line of tortoises from another island that looks similar to the Floriana gene pool and then they bred them.
Is that right?
Yeah, so they ended up over the course of several years with about 20 individual animals involved in this breeding effort and from those they raised 158 young tortoises. They raised them to between 8 and 13 years old so to give a picture that's about 18 inches in size, a 30 to 50 pound chalk of turtle.
But she said that there basically these are pre-teens in turtle years and not going to be
mature enough to breed until they're like 25 or so but now these 158 tortoises are free on Floriana, ranging around although they do have transmitter tags to help track and monitor them.
“It's like they're going to college or something, you know what I mean?”
Like wild times. A bunch of pre-teens released on an island by themselves, it sounds like a reality show. Yeah, I mean, she described them as finding their way on Floriana island and you know, she said that once upon a time there were probably thousands of tortoises on this island so they planned to release more next year and the year after that and at least so far it
turns out that they seem to be really taking to the island. I asked Penny Becker about the moment they were released. I'm thinking of seeing, you know, people release the panther back into the jungle or whatever and they open up the crate and it leaps out. I don't see that happening with the tortoises.
If you know, sometimes when you see these releases, different animals, they sort of like a bit hesitant to get out of the box or to see themselves in that environment, that was not the case with the tortoises. From the moment they were able to be, you know, released from the crates that they were delivered in, they just started out and they wasted no time every green leaf along their
way, they're eating it and they're went in every particular direction and started exploring. They did not care that we were there, watching them, they just got out and they started doing their thing right away. It's like the slow motion version of the panther leaf. Yeah.
Exactly. Nobody's going to get knocked over by a tortoise leaping out of the cage. What was that moment like for Penny Becker? You know, I asked her about that exact thing. It was a fantastic experience.
One of the things that was the most exciting about this particular moment is that these tortoises
were never experienced on this island in any of our lifetimes.
“So I think it was really momentous for the community to understand that the things that they”
heard from their grandfather's and were just stories in the past was actually coming true. There was not a dry eye when we did the ceremony with the community and some of the kids named the tortoises that were going to share their home. It was such an emotional, joyful, amazing experience. We're lucky at Island Conservation because we get to see the promise, especially what's
possible on an island, right? It's a special place with a lot of endemic species and because it's a closed system, you can see nature come back just like that. And in this case, where we've been working towards the restoration of Floriano for 15 years plus with the community to be able to celebrate that with them was really meaningful.
I remember talking to Veronica, the leader of the Floriano community and she said, "I can't believe you. We have gotten to this place after so many years. It's really lovely. It's profound. I mean, we rarely get good news conservation stories. So I love it. Thank you for ringing at Charles. Yeah, I mean, she's stressed that this tortoise reintroduction process is part of a larger
context, right? Just releasing tortoises onto the island isn't enough. They've had to remove other invasive species. They have a list of about a dozen other species that they want to bring back to the island. Some of those may come back on their own. Others are going to need to go through a similar breeding and reintroduction process, but it's definitely a great step.
“Hmm. Okay, we have time for a couple more slow-moving stories. What else you got?”
I want to wish you a very happy sea turtle nesting season, Floria. Sea turtles come out of the ocean on to sandy beaches to build their nests. This is kind of temperature dependent. But in Florida, figure it's like March to October, and it turns out Delray Beach, Florida
has already reported the first beach nests of leather back turtles. That's one of several
species that are found in Florida waters. How do we celebrate? Well, I mean, some of it seems pretty basic, right? If you're in a place where turtles nest first be aware that weird shape on the beach might not be a leftover sand gazzle. Obviously, don't disturb the nests. They need about two months to hatch. Don't disturb
The turtles.
Because the nest laying, you know, it happens in the dark of night, and extra light can
mess up the turtle's behavior. Hmm.
“Okay. I know you also have one more ancient turtle tail to tell.”
Yes, this is a fun one. Fossil remnants of what may be an ancient sea turtle stampede. The idea of a sea turtle stampede just really lights up my brain. Yeah.
So this is research published last month in the journal Cretaceous Research.
The story is also great, great journal. Yes, one of my top breeds. Back in 2019, a group of free climbers, sort of by chance discovered a large number of these footprint traces they thought on a limestone slab in Italy on a mountainside near the city of Encana. And they sent pictures of these two scientists to then return to the area to study them.
And you see what looks like a series of flipper marks. So moving along together, imagine, you know, you've got flippers, you're scooting along the ground. There are a bunch of these crescent shaped marks from your flippers, just sort of, you know, shuffling along.
“Like how many, though, like are we talking about hundreds?”
Yes, yes. Yeah. So you also see like ripple marks from moving water on the stone. And they tested the stone and they find fossil plankton in it so that they can get a rough date on.
What were they running from? Well, the thought is that there were a bunch of ancient sea turtles lazing along the musi ocean floor. There's an earthquake.
“The turtle start a stampede to flee the area, leaving these flipper marks in the”
shoes, and then the mud gets covered by a layer of sediment by the earthquake and, you know, frozen in time.
So fast forward, so 80 million years, it's now a stone slab on the side of a mountain.
Beautiful. Cypherized chief turtle and tortoise correspondent, Charles Berquist. Thank you, Charles. Thanks, Flora. If you have a turtle tail, or really any science tail, you want to share or question.
Give us a call. 7-7-4 Cypheride is the number, and I'm going to say it again slowly 8-7-7-4 Cypheride, you know, like a turtle. We'll see you next time. I'm Flora Licksman.
