Adventures of a rehabilitated loggerhead turtle
Client enquiry:
In November 2007, a badly injured, dehydrated and exhaused female loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) was washed up on Baylys Beach in the north west of New Zealand. She was rescued by Department of Conservation staff and delivered to Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Encounter Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre in Auckland in an effort to nurse her back to full strength.
Her weight was dramatically low for her size at only 47kg’s. A year later with her injuries completely healed and having put on 35kg and thriving, it was time to release her back to the ocean. At that time Kelly Tarlton’s approached Sirtrack to see if we would be interested in supporting the release of the turtle in an effort to trace her whereabouts once back in her natural environment.
Sirtrack response:
One of Sirtrack’s core values is to support the protection of our natural environment and it made so much sense to get involved on our very own doorstep.
Sirtrack donated a KiwiSat 101 Argos PTT running continuously to get as fine scale movements post release as possible. We hope the data obtained helps in some way to better understand these endangered turtles movements and management, particularly in response to rehabilitation programmes such as these.
Outcome:
On the 28th January 2009, Sirtrack staff fitted a KiwiSat 101 Argos PTT to the loggerhead nicknamed "Tarly". On the 29th January 2009 at 11h00 local NZ time (22h00 on the 28th January UTC) Tarly was safely released offshore from a boat at the Poor Knights Islands Marine Reserve.
See maps of Tarly´s movements