[Animals] Sea turtles are helping predict Asia's most disastrous storms

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Turtles are always close to the surface in the sea. Therefore, they could be the key to the timely prediction of strong storms in Asia.
Artificial satellites are no longer enough. Faced with the ecological pressure that the climate crisis is imposing on the planet, human devices in space are proving not to have sufficient capacity to predict the damage that some severe weather events can have on Asia.

And what's more: scientists who monitor hurricanes, tropical storms and other similar events are failing to identify where they form. Therefore, a team of scientists decided to look back at nature. From the conservation of turtles, they realized that those who have trackers can identify tropical storms in early stages.

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See the birth of storms from the sea
According to a study recently published in Hakai Magazine, the strength of tropical storms comes from the water. For this reason, the turtles that inhabit the Indian Ocean are ideal for predicting their birth and observing their development. As they swim close to the surface of the sea, from 25 to 200 meters deep, they can identify the temperature and conditions of the most superficial layer of the oceans.

This alternative was born from a study conducted by Olivier Bousquet, director of research at the French Ministry of Sustainable Development. In the absence of information on climatic conditions in the Southwest Indian Ocean, he teamed up with biologists at Kélonia, a sea turtle observatory on Réunion, a French island about 950 kilometers east of Madagascar.

Researchers knew that turtles spend a lot of time feeding in storms and giant whirlpools. According to Bousquet, the information collected based on the movement of the turtles would provide unprecedented data on how the structure of the oceans changes over time.

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The new sentinels of the climate crisis

In 2019, the team of researchers released 15 tracker-tagged turtles to monitor conditions in this area. That's how the researchers realized that "tagged turtles could help climate studies by giving scientists a way to calibrate ocean models and satellite data," as documented by Smithsonian Magazine.

WITH THIS STEP, THE BIOLOGISTS WERE EXCITED THAT THEY WOULD KNOW FIRST-HAND THE TEMPERATURE, DEPTH AND LOCATION OF THEIR MARINE ENVIRONMENTS. AND WHAT'S MORE: THEY COULD BETTER KNOW THE DIVING BEHAVIOR AND OTHER TYPICAL MOVEMENTS OF TURTLES, EVEN WHEN THERE ARE NO STORMS.

Over time, the turtles fed the satellites 20 to 50 times a day with new information. Just as Bousquet expected. However, the movement stopped dead in its tracks. When investigating individual cases, the team realized that some of the specimens were trapped in fishing nets. "We were shocked," laments Bousquet.

Despite the tragedy, the three-week voyage of some of them had produced an unprecedented amount of oceanographic information. But Ilona's three-week trip had produced a great deal of data. Despite the losses, researchers at the French National Center for Space Studies want to replicate the success of this project.

For which, STORM: Sea Turtles for Ocean Research and Monitoring was designed. Other institutions, such as the Interreg ocean research program of the European Union and the University of Reunion Island, are joining these conservation efforts, so that the model can be replicated in other areas of the world —if industrial fishing allows it, Sure.

https://www.ngenespanol.com/animales/las-tortugas-contribuyen-a-la-prediccion-de-tormentas-fuertes-en-asia/