At Sea Between Ascension Island and the Equator
Late last night tiny travelers left the shores of Ascension Island for points distant. Green sea turtle hatchlings swarmed from nests, energetically navigating a deeply pitted nesting beach to reach the surf and their new home, the Atlantic Ocean. Some of these endearing creatures will never take steps on land again; only females will come ashore to nest. Here in tropical Ascension, more female turtles are created than males, sex determination being driven by temperature. Ultimately, only a tiny percentage of all the new emerging turtles-in-training will survive ever to reproduce.
Our visit to Ascension coincided perfectly with peak nesting season. In addition to watching the wind-up toy hatchlings moving to the water, our turtle-pace patience was rewarded with observation of enormous females on the beach laying eggs. Mothers climb ashore after dark and dig narrow egg chambers within larger excavated pits where they drop out dozens of leathery (oversized ping pong ball) eggs, before covering it all up and returning to sea. This process takes at least three or four hours and is a culmination of the incredible migration from sea grass beds off Brazil where these marine reptiles feed.
That the adult turtles starve themselves once they leave the South American coast and that they can find tiny isolated Ascension Island 1500 miles away is truly extraordinary and speaks of the species’ successful millions years-old culture. Why they venture such great distances to Ascension is a question for biologists, oceanographers and geologists alike. Some of the pieces of the puzzle that we ponder are the relative young age of the volcanic island, the lack of reef-building corals to contribute sand to appropriate nesting beaches and which currents the turtles ride on the return to Ascension.
Intriguing new evidence indicates that the turtles may even be smelling their way home, possibly picking up a distant down tradewind scent of guano from Ascension’s nesting sea birds. Needless to say, we do not know how these turtles achieve such an incredible migration between their feeding and nesting areas. It may be this long distance voyaging that accounts for the enormous size of the Ascension green turtles, some females reaching over 600 pounds.
While cleaning a black jack caught last night from our ship’s anchorage, our Galley crew discovered six turtle hatchlings in this one fish’s stomach. The little turtles we watched leaving the beach face great challenges ahead of them; a few will survive to maturity and return decades from now to these very same beaches to continue the ages-long story of Ascension Island’s green sea turtles.
And like the hatchlings, travelers left the shores of Ascension Island late last night (but in the comfort of Zodiacs) and reboarded the Endeavour for points distant. We made way north all day, today the last full day in the Southern Hemisphere on this epic voyage of exploration of remote islands of the Atlantic.
Late last night tiny travelers left the shores of Ascension Island for points distant. Green sea turtle hatchlings swarmed from nests, energetically navigating a deeply pitted nesting beach to reach the surf and their new home, the Atlantic Ocean. Some of these endearing creatures will never take steps on land again; only females will come ashore to nest. Here in tropical Ascension, more female turtles are created than males, sex determination being driven by temperature. Ultimately, only a tiny percentage of all the new emerging turtles-in-training will survive ever to reproduce.
Our visit to Ascension coincided perfectly with peak nesting season. In addition to watching the wind-up toy hatchlings moving to the water, our turtle-pace patience was rewarded with observation of enormous females on the beach laying eggs. Mothers climb ashore after dark and dig narrow egg chambers within larger excavated pits where they drop out dozens of leathery (oversized ping pong ball) eggs, before covering it all up and returning to sea. This process takes at least three or four hours and is a culmination of the incredible migration from sea grass beds off Brazil where these marine reptiles feed.
That the adult turtles starve themselves once they leave the South American coast and that they can find tiny isolated Ascension Island 1500 miles away is truly extraordinary and speaks of the species’ successful millions years-old culture. Why they venture such great distances to Ascension is a question for biologists, oceanographers and geologists alike. Some of the pieces of the puzzle that we ponder are the relative young age of the volcanic island, the lack of reef-building corals to contribute sand to appropriate nesting beaches and which currents the turtles ride on the return to Ascension.
Intriguing new evidence indicates that the turtles may even be smelling their way home, possibly picking up a distant down tradewind scent of guano from Ascension’s nesting sea birds. Needless to say, we do not know how these turtles achieve such an incredible migration between their feeding and nesting areas. It may be this long distance voyaging that accounts for the enormous size of the Ascension green turtles, some females reaching over 600 pounds.
While cleaning a black jack caught last night from our ship’s anchorage, our Galley crew discovered six turtle hatchlings in this one fish’s stomach. The little turtles we watched leaving the beach face great challenges ahead of them; a few will survive to maturity and return decades from now to these very same beaches to continue the ages-long story of Ascension Island’s green sea turtles.
And like the hatchlings, travelers left the shores of Ascension Island late last night (but in the comfort of Zodiacs) and reboarded the Endeavour for points distant. We made way north all day, today the last full day in the Southern Hemisphere on this epic voyage of exploration of remote islands of the Atlantic.
