About the episode
If you can predict when turtle nests will hatch, you can protect them better. This should help a special sensor in the form of an egg.
Sea turtles are in poor condition all over the world. So there are different attempts to protect different species. For example, there is a GPS egg that can be tracked when poachers empty a nest and is actually tracked around when the eggs hatch, so that baby turtles can be helped. Sometimes they want to crawl towards the city lights instead of the sea.
Estimating egg yield only is labour-intensive and estimating is not always correct. That’s why scientists have now developed a cheap, egg-shaped sensor. One that can be placed in the nest – and still is now via wire to a communication mast – transmits movements in the nest directly. This allowed them to set patterns and determine roughly when the turtles climb across the sands of the day.
According to the researchers, the new TurtleSense system could make a significant contribution to protecting animals, but could also help determine how long a beach should remain closed to visitors, for example.
