A Chat About Sea Turtles with Christine Figgener

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss sea turtle mysteries, biology, research and conservation with sea turtle researcher and conservationist Dr. Christine Figgener.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and we've got a really great interview to share with
you today. This is with Dr Christine Bigener. Uh so

(00:23):
as a way of introduction. Dr Christine Figner is a
marine conservation biologist and science communicator who has been really
successful on social media. Sometimes known as the Sea Turtle
straw Lady, she has raised global awareness of the issue
of ocean plastic pollution and has been studying sea turtles
for over fifteen years. You might have seen her in

(00:46):
a viral video moment where she was she and her
research team were removing a plastic straw that was lodged
in a sea turtles nose, and of course that video
triggered a lot of thought about what is what is
the effect to say single use plastics such as plastic
straws in on marine life. Christine today is a is

(01:06):
a science communicator who uh speaks at events about her
sea turtle conservation work, fighting plastic pollution, and empowering women
in science. In eighteen, Time magazine honored her outreach and
advocacy efforts by naming her a Next Generation Leader. As
Director of Science and Education for the US based Footprint Foundation,

(01:27):
she travels the globe educating people about the effects of
plastic pollution on our environment and human health, and inspiring
people to reduce their use of plastic. She's also the
co founder and scientific lead of a community centered, grassroots
conservation organization in Costa Rica that is researching and protecting
sea turtles. Christine's overall goal is to reach as many

(01:47):
people as possible with her message to eliminate plastic from
our environment, save sea turtles from extinction, empower women in science,
and make our planets safer and healthier for wildlife and
people alike. So that's just a really fun at Let's
go ahead and dive into it. Let's get into some
gnarly facts and stories about sea turtles. We have all

(02:10):
sea turtle questions for you here today. We may ask
you whale stuff too, because you were You were also
originally interested in cetations, right, Yeah, somebody did the homework
on me. Yeah, I became a marine biologist because I
love humpback whales. Oh did you happen to read the
story of supposedly a man off the coast province town

(02:32):
who was a lobster diver reported that he was temporarily
swallowed by a humpback whale. Do you believe it's true?
Creepy and funny? Is that allegedly it's the same guy
that like a few years ago, survived airplane crash in
Costa Rica, one of the few survivors wow about having
more than one life. Yeah? Well wait, so do you

(02:53):
have any reason to be skeptical of the story or
do you think it's plausible that he did go into
the humpback whales mouth and then was spit out. I
think that's possible. I don't think it was swallowed. I
just think, I mean, not swallowed all the way right,
So I think probably. I mean, if you've ever seen him,
big whales feeding, right, so they kind of have those
bubble curtains and then they just go in and just
open their mouths wide just to like, you know, swallow

(03:16):
the largest quantity possible and if you happen to just
be there. But I'm sure that way I was like,
oh my god, what's that in my mouth? Is just
like wrong place, wrong time? Huh. Well, we just we
just jumped right into it. Maybe we should back up
and uh and actually get officially started. Um, so one
place we do like to start here is Christine. Can

(03:36):
you just introduce yourself to the audience, stating your name,
your title, as well as any key affiliations or employers
organizations that you want right up there at the top
with your ID. Yeah, my name is Christine Siginger. I
am I Trade the marine biologist, and I have been
working on the interface between conservation and applied signs for

(03:57):
about more than fifteen years now, mainly with sea turtles,
but also with cetaceans and wells and dolphins. And right
now I am running a small community based grassroots organization
in Constrica that is protecting sea turtles. And I'm also
the director of science and Education for the US based
Footprint Foundation, which is we're trying to convince people to

(04:20):
reduce their use of plastics. So that's pretty much me
and I'm nutshell. I guess, so you mentioned that you
were originally interested in cetations before you got into sea
turtles as a research area. How did you How did
you make that leap? And I guess you can back
all the way up to setations if you want. Yeah,
I mean I in my teens. You know, we're usually

(04:41):
people are obsessing about boy bands. I guess I'm not
going to say which one was popular during my times
because that would review my age, I guess um. But
instead of that, I was actually collecting you know, posters
and articles and other stuff about whales and dolphins, and
I put particularly loved hum big whales. So I I

(05:04):
play music. I played the guitar, and I sing, and
I always thought, you know, it would be so cool
to study the songs of hump big whales. You know,
it's kind of a cultural thing and it would have
combined a lot of my interests into like this one thing.
But then I happened to have the chance to go
to Costrica on a sea turtle or into a seaturtal

(05:24):
project when I did my master's into a leather bag project,
very specific, and I totally fell in love with that
type of work because it's super hands on. I don't
think there's that many, you know, jobs as a wildlife
biologist where you can be with such a large animal,
you know, for extended times in the natural environment without

(05:47):
having to you know, tranquilize them or restrain them even
in any shape or form, and it was so impressive,
just like the environment. Right, So you're on these tropical beaches,
have this incredible you know, biodiversity all around you. You
have the jungle right next to you on one side,
and you have you know, the vast ocean on the other.
You have this incredible night sky over your head. And

(06:10):
then you just you know, walk, you know, kilometers and
hours without end on the beach just to find this
like one track that leads up to the verm, up
to the vegetation, and you hope that the turtle is
still there. And then once you see the turtle, it's
just you know, they're real life dinosaurs if you think
about it, right, they have been around for hundred on

(06:33):
a hundreds, but definitely more than a hundred million years,
especially leather bags, which are like the oldest lineage of
sea turtles that we still have. And when you just
sit next to them, they're massive. I mean, they're absolutely gigdentists.
And you can see them, you know, using their real
floppers just like hands, digging their ex chamberers, squeezing out

(06:54):
the eggs, creating a new generation. And yeah, I totally
I was totally aw and I just Okay, this is
like the coolest thing I've ever done in my life,
and that is just how I fell in love and
just stayed with it. Wow. You know, speaking of just
how long sea turtles have been around, Um, well, what
is it about the sea turtle that has enabled it

(07:15):
to survive while so many other marine reptiles have gone extinct?
Like what is what do you think is the winning
design of the sea turtle? You know, that's that's a
really good question, and I don't think we have like
a definite answer. I think, especially in evolutionary biology, we
always make very many intelligent guesses. But of course, at
one point there were a lot more sea turtle species

(07:36):
than there are nowadays. As so we are down to seven,
seven extant species. And if you look at the seven
species right now, it's really interesting because they all have
similar ecologies to certain degree because you know, you can
find them in usually warmer waters because the active therm,
so that means they cannot regulate their own body temperature,

(07:57):
so that means they have to get an outside source
to really you know, get their metabolism going. So that
means you find them in tropical waters subtropical waters and
they're all coming onto the beach to nest. But then
if you look at that diet, and I think that
is really the key is you know, how they diversified.
It's really over the over the axis of the diet.

(08:19):
So we have very specialized species such as the hawks
bill or the leather bags. Of the hawks bill feeds
mainly on sponges, the leather bag feeds mainly on jellyfish.
I mean, that's another really cool thing if you think
about how large that animal is that feeds on an
animal that's just barely you know, anything other than water. Um.
Then we have green turtles that are as adults at

(08:41):
least mainly herbivorous, so they're very different in their you know,
trophic niche as we would say scientists. So that means,
you know, they have very different diet and that is
probably the the secret to their you know, coexistence, that
they're not competing with each other for resources. And the
other thing is sea turtles are incredible resilience. So I've

(09:02):
never met um animals that are so resilient. I mean,
I've seen so many turtles that have suffered incredible injuries literally,
you know, amputations, of limbs or really crazy damage to
their to their shell, and they're still able to survive
and not just survive, but you know, still kind of
go with their biological program go and mates come up

(09:24):
to the beach and lay their eggs, even though they
might have literally no real flippers anymore, or massive slashes
in their carapace. I mean, I've seen really really sad things,
but it also makes me think, wow, yeah, I mean,
you're really resilient, so that means things might not face
you as much as others. And they're also pretty widespread, right,
so that means we have really sea turtles and almost

(09:46):
all tropical waters. So um, even if maybe one population
might go extinct, they are probably able to repopulate, you know,
into in from that population into other areas again. And
that might have been you know, the secret of why
they were able to survive so long, because they were
probably able to first of all, migrate into into other

(10:06):
places if if things became inhabitable or were able to
you know, diversify that diet over the course of millions
of years. And it seems also be the body plan
that they have seems to be really successful. Right, So
I don't know if everybody knows that. But turtles, not
just sea turtles, Um. Their shell is actually made from

(10:28):
their rip cache that merged together. So the single rips
it's kind of you know, became bony and just like yeah,
became the shell. So the shell is actually the vertebrate,
and the rips and everything else like your shoulder blades
and everything moved inside. So they have created this incredible armor.
I mean, in German, if you translate like turtle, it

(10:51):
actually means shielded toad because the habits like shield and protected,
right um. And that means of course that once sea
turtles have read to certain buddy size, there's not that
many natural predators that are actually able to eat a turtle,
right So right now, I mean we're taking like humans
aside at this point, but if you're talking about natural predators,

(11:13):
it's really only about you know, the the animals really
strong mandibles that can crack that shell. So that's the
tiger shark, is the j jack wires, and it's crocodiles
that might be able to really eat an entire turtle.
I mean they might be able otherwise to take like
a bite out of flipper, but that's not the delicious
pipe with all the fat and all the all the meat,
it's all inside of the shell, right, So correct me

(11:35):
if I'm wrong, But I believe there's still some mystery
about the sort of step wise evolutionary process that led
to the turtle having a shell? Isn't there? Because I
think I was reading that, Um, it's sort of hypothesized
that maybe a middle stage was first you had some
kind of lizard like creature that had a wide, large
rib cage, and then maybe in between it had a
body plan that was sort of like you would see

(11:57):
with models of the ankleosaurus, where they're sort of plates
all over the back, and then over time those plates fused.
Is that sort of in the right direction? Yeah? I
mean I'm not an expert on like, you know, the
paleontology I think, or like the actual um evolution of
of like the body plant. But what's interesting if you
just look back, for example, even just look at the

(12:17):
leather back So we have seven species, as I said,
and six of them all belong to the height shell turtles. Um,
so it's kind of the same group. And then we
have the leather back turtles, which are their own lineage,
and leather bags actually look a lot more like the
you know, the the older lineages as well, because they
have a reduced care place. So leather bags are pretty

(12:39):
much named because they have a soft shell, so they
do not have those bony plates. Um. If you look
at it at a skeleton of the leather bag, you
will not exactly see what I just said where the
grips have grown together, so it's it's more like cartilage
um um. And parts of it is it's just like
a reduced shell. And our colon for example, which is
one of the you know, first seat riddles that that

(13:01):
we've known of from the fossil finds, looks a lot
like leather bags, so they have you know, they have
some type of shell, but it's more a reduced shell.
And also I think and other fossil finds, you can
see that certain sea turtles, for example, had a like
a stronger plastron which is like the belly part of
the shell victually as you know, um like kind of

(13:22):
a reinforced carapace which is the upper part of the shell,
and vice versa. So it might have been like different
pressures for example, of where your natural predators came from.
So if you were mainly you know, attacked from the bottom.
Maybe it was you know, advantageous to have you know,
a kind of reinforced shield on your belly rather than
on your back or vice versa. So you don't know.

(13:44):
But that's, like I said, that's the intelligent guesses that
you have may have to make about evolution and why
certain things developed or weren't successful in the end. Excellent.
So I'm not going to ask basically three questions at
the same time, but they're very they're very simple and sudden.
They are kind to flow together. So how many of
the seven extant sea turtle species have you observed in

(14:06):
the wild, which ones do you work with the most,
and do you have a favorite? So from the seven
I have seen in the wild six and missing the
flat fact turtle. So we have two species which are
considered endemic, which means they're only found in a very specific,
very limited geo geographic range, which is first of all,

(14:29):
the chempstradilely turtle, which can be mainly found or solely
found in the Gulf of Mexico. And then there's the
flat fact turtle, which is pretty much found in the
waters around northern Australia between Papa Papua New Guinea and
and in Australia they but they nest mainly on the
north shore of Australia, so I haven't seen that one yet.

(14:50):
That is really, um my last one that I'm missing.
I do work mainly with the species that we have
in Costrica where I'm based. So the species I started
with is the leather back turtle, but we're also getting
you know, a lower number of green turtles nesting in
the Caribbean as well as on the leather back beaches

(15:12):
I've worked on in the Pacific. And then for my PhD,
I really extensively studied olive red lace, which is one
of the smallest species. And then right now, since last year,
I just initiated a larger hospital project, which is also
the same beach where the leather bags are nesting. So
you've always got some, but now we're really focusing on,
you know, monitoring the hospital population, which is not nesting

(15:36):
exactly at the same time than the leather bags. And well,
my favorite one, hands down leather bags. I mean, I
hate to say it, and everybody that disagrees with me,
they're just wrong. Um just because leather bags I just incredible.
I mean they really they they just constitute so many

(15:58):
or like they have so many super a littles about them.
I mean, they are the species that are distributed the widest.
So we're still talking about an active them animal, right,
an animal that is in fear not able to regulate
their body temperature. But you will find or you can't
find leather blacks in waters that are substantially colder than
what the perfect temperature would be for them. Right, So

(16:21):
our populations in Costa Rica, depending which side of the
coast on they feed either in front of Nova Scotia
in Canada, Wales, England, also in the North Sea, so
recently there was actually stranding in Denmark um and then
the ones that have nesting on the Pacific side they
are usually going down to Peru, which are also pretty
cold waters. And how they can do it is, you know,

(16:44):
they have really found a way of first of all,
maintaining their body temperature, the core temperature steady. So they
have this like incredible fatty layers. It's almost like a
winter coat that keeps them warm and insulated. But then
of course they don't have it on their flippers, but
they do have it around the esophagus, so that's really cool, right,
So that means even when they like swallow their prey,

(17:06):
which might be colder than their core temperature, it prevents
their core body temperature from dropping. And then it is
you know, first, of course it's a large animal, so
they have a better surface to volume ratio. It's it's
it's a term, it's called the gun to thermi um.
You know that it's just like you don't lose as
much heat over your surface just because you're large. And

(17:28):
then also because your flippers of course are exposed, they're
not having this fetty tissue. And in theory, you know,
all that blood that circulates, the warm blood goes out,
would cool down, go back, but no, they have this
countercurrent system where you know, the warm blood that comes
from the body is actually warming up the cold blood
that comes back from the flipper without losing the heat. Right,

(17:49):
So they're pretty much just like pass it on to
the blood that goes back into the body. And then
the last thing that is actually a little bit more
recent is that some scientists just discovered that the bags
are able to produce a certain amount of body heat
through digestion, so they made them swallow temperature pills um,
you know little devices that can literally measure the different

(18:10):
temperature while they were going through the digestive track, and
they're like, wow, okay, you're digesting and you're actually producing here.
That's pretty amazing. So you know the limitations of what
we know about active therms and it's pretty it's pretty incredible.
I mean, other bags are just wow, mind blown. Would
would that last fact mean that it's not actually such

(18:31):
a strict dividing line between warm blooded animals and cold
blooded animals? But more question of degree this is this
is a good question. Some people have argued that leather
bags might be not as you know, strictly active therm
as we would have categorized them. But then, of course
where do you draw the line? Right? Scientists like to
have drawers where you can like stuff things into and

(18:52):
it's just like, okay, you have this, but not that.
And I think sometimes, you know, especially when you think
about how evolution happens, it's just not that clear and cut.
So in talking about the leather back, you were mentioning
that it has a self warming throat. When you look
inside their mouth, it does really look like a horror show.
They have these uh, these spikes so what's going on

(19:13):
with all that? What does what does that tell us
about the lifestyle of the leather at sea turtle. Well,
I mean you just have to think about, right, you
are a leather back turtle, You're swimming underwater, and you
are trying to eat this very deliberate thing, what is
a jellyfish, But you also don't want to swallow the seawater, right,

(19:34):
So it's not like you're wanting to eat seawater all
the time, you know. So you're taking a bite and
you swallow the jellyfish. You swallow the seawater, but before
you maybe we shouldn't say swallow, so you kind of
take it into your mouth, but before you actually swallow it,
you want to get rid of the sea water. And
so that means you also do not want to get
rid of the jellyfish though, But it's so you know,
sliming glibbery that there's a good chance it would go

(19:57):
out if it wouldn't be for those spines that a
cut during the entire mouth down all the way down
to the aesephagus. Actually, other sea turtle species have those
spines as well, they're just not so like in the
mouth cavity already, so it's usually just like the aesephagus
that is having those um But yeah, and in the
ladder bag, it's right behind the mandibles. It's where it starts.
So it looks at one of those alien mouth that

(20:19):
you know that I think that pretty typical I feel
in science fiction movies. But it's really about and they're
all pointing towards the stomach, and that means it's really
kind of meant to, you know, for the jellyfish to
get stuck in it, and they are able to extract
the water, usually through their nostrils, so there's a connection
between the mouth cavity and the nose um so they

(20:40):
don't even have to open the mouth and then they
just collect the jellyfish and then they just swallow it
without all the seawater. That's amazing. So what does it
mean to specialize in eating jellyfish? Like, what kind of
niche is that? Is that the kind of niche where
you're getting more prey and it's easier to get or
is it the other way around? What does that mean
to you? Well, I mean, we don't know of how

(21:03):
it started right to just see what it is right now,
But the thing is the sort of leather backs feed
in areas where there's a high density of of of jellyfish,
so that means the energy that it takes for them
to get to those jellyfish is not as large. We're
not as big, and they're obviously able to still fatten
up enough to produce their eggs or have enough energy

(21:26):
to you know, do their large migrations. And it's really
funny if you ever get a chance to to watch
some of those videos that were filmed in Nova Score
in front of Nova s Kotia, it is really you know,
the leather bag just swimming through the water and just
like eating one eating another one do like these you know,
large groups of jellyfish. Um, it's just they have to

(21:47):
eat a lot, so it's pretty much you know tons
probably um go on so many parts of their of
their body weights in order to to to sustain themselves
and even you know, have more to do all of
those things that they need to do to reproduce. But
that is probably one of the reasons they're not nesting
every year. So females skip usually one or two seasons

(22:09):
in between so they have enough time to fetten up
use all the follicles and then make the migration back
to to the nesting beaches. That that eating behavior kind
of reminds me if you ever saw the episode of
The Simpsons where Homer goes to space and the ends
up eating the potato chips floating in zero G. Yes,
that is very accurate. Actually, maybe not as crunchy, but

(22:32):
the um. Yeah. So I guess backing up a little
bit to just sort of generally about sea turtles, what
do you think are the biggest public misconceptions about sea turtles.
I don't know if there's as many misconceptions about sea

(22:53):
turtles this for example, about dolphins, um or sharks. I
think people like sea turtles because they're cute. What I
always find very interesting is that people really don't like
reptiles in general. So, you know, snakes and crocodiles people
usually associate with evil. They have an evil look. And
I always have to laugh because sea turtles are also reptiles.

(23:16):
It's just that they seem to be a little bit cuter,
or considered a little bit cuter than in other animals. Um.
I think a lot of people don't know much about,
you know, the ecology of sea turtles. For example, that
sea turtles have to breathe air, so they're you know,
having lungs just like us. Um that they're really highly migratory,

(23:37):
so it's not like they're you know, just hanging out
in front of the beach and then they're coming back.
I think there's just a lot of information that is
not known to the general public. I think that's other
than misconceptions that I can think of, like out of
the top of my head. I was in preparation for
you coming on the show here. I was listening to

(23:58):
Cara Museums in be with you on So You Want
to Be a Marine Biologist podcast, which is at Marine
Bio dot life, and I was fascinated by your descriptions
of the auto bada. So I was wondering, could you
tell our listeners what the arabada is and what it's
like to witness it and study it. Yeah. So, Um,

(24:18):
from all the secretal species, there's only two species that
engage in that what we call the adibada behavior. Aribada
is from the Spanish word for arrival, and it is
pretty much describing a synchronized mass nesting. So the olive
redley and the camps retally the two smallest species are
the ones that do nest in those synchronized mass nestings,

(24:42):
which usually happened in the case of olive release at
least about once a month, and then depending if which
season it is, you have like larger audibadas or smaller
audi badas. But the really large audibadas can have up
to half a million females. So you just have to envision. Uh.
Of course, it's not like it's all happening in one night,

(25:02):
so it's usually over the course of or to seven days.
But it's usually even if in Austria. Now in Lost
kast Rica, which is our largest adivada beach, it's about
a six kilometer beach, but the synchronized mass nesting only
happens about less than a kilometer, right, So you have
to envision once the adivada starts, it is that if

(25:23):
somebody blows a whistle and all of a sudden, you
have all these females that had already been gathering right
in front of the shore. They are all coming up
together and start their nesting program. Right, It's like a
little computer chip. It all kind of looks the same.
So they come up, they start digging, they start laying
their eggs and start camouflage and they do their little

(25:44):
really dense and then if and it's just they crawl
over each other. It smells horrendous because they dig up
old nests that have been decaying, so it's really really disgusting.
They throw sand in your face when you're trying to
do something. If you forget your backpack somewhere, there's a
good chance and one of the females just gets stucks
with her flipper and just like drags it down into

(26:06):
the water. It's just insanity for like four or seven nights,
and then it's gone. And you wouldn't even know that
this just happened if it wouldn't be for you know,
usually the vultures and dogs that are digging up nests
and you see all these you know, little white have
pieces which are all egg pieces on the beach and
it's still smells a little bit funny, but that is

(26:28):
what the nativada is. It's it's absolutely impressive. I would
say if you ever get a chance to see one,
definitely do it. Now that the rotten eggs, of the
decayed eggs that are being dug up, now are those
the percentage of eggs that are just always lost generally,
because I understand there's I've seen it broken down to
where like there's a certain percentage of eggs they just

(26:50):
never hatch and remain in the ground. And then you
get into the survival rates for each stage of the
sea turtle. Yeah, okay, so there's with the adivada, it's
it's a little bit more complicated it. Let's say that
way because you have so since it's happening every month,
and the nest usually needs about forty five to fifty
five days to incubate, So that means if you are

(27:12):
one of the very first females that are coming up
in adibada number one, let's say, then this nest that
is late at that day has to actually survive to adivadas, right,
it has to survive all the females that are coming
after her, and then in thirty days it has to
survive the next adibada up until it has incubated enough
to hatch. So those nests are not super likely to

(27:34):
survive in certain times of the year, especially also because
there is you know, there's a super high density of nests.
So um, it means it's it's um Yeah, like one
square meters has a ton of nest really way too many,
and so that means there is a lot of microbiota
on the beach you kind of like I always think

(27:55):
of a compost, because the sand even on Atibada beaches
is not really sad, it's more like soil um. And
so you know, the bacteria of course are affecting first
of all the supply of oxygen that the eggs are having,
and of course they're also you know, infecting the eggs
and just like you know, doing damage in other ways.

(28:17):
And then the other thing is of course that the heat.
So unfortunately and a lot of the Adi Bada beaches
there are in areas where we already have a lot
of problem with high temperatures because of climate change, and
so the rising temperatures are pretty much lethal. Um. So
that means the incubation temperatures way too high for any
egg to survive. So in Austria now um during dry

(28:42):
season these incubate. Just the hatching success of the nest
that have survived till the end it's only about fiftent
I think, which is very very low, one five, so
it's it's not very good. And then of course it's
very difficult to quantify of how many eggs or nest
from the initially eight ones actually even making it to

(29:02):
that point. And I mean there's this one thing that
is also contributing to it. In Austinal at least there
is um. I think the world only legal egg harvests,
So the village is allowed in the first seventy two
hours of each Adibada to harvest as many nests pretty
much as they're able to. Um. They're justifying it with

(29:23):
the fact that hey, those nests would have the lowest
chance of survival anyways, so we're just kind of taking
them and selling them to the markets where people still
want to buy secret likes. It is a little bit controversial.
I don't know if you want to go into that,
but that is happening as well. So that means and
of course if you would collect data on it, it

(29:43):
doesn't it it is totally um. Yeah, it's going because
you don't know, you know what would be if they
would lend those nests in the sand now in Costa
Rica aside from the dogs that you mentioned, what what
other mammals are getting in on the feast here? Yeah,
So in Austria now thinks it's pretty developed. It's really

(30:04):
the dogs, the vultures, mammals, raccoons, squatties which are the
raccoon family more than anything. But we do have also
an Ali Bada nesting beach which is in a national
park in Santa Rosa, and they actually have jaguars on
and the ati vada there is just because also, I mean,

(30:24):
just because you have the synchronized mass nesting, that doesn't
mean all of your olive really turtles are also engaging
in that nesting behavior. There's some plasticity, and some females
nest solitarily, just like any other turtle species as well.
So I mean most beaches have olive really nesting year
round and almost every single night you have like one
or two turtles, and so that olive really population is

(30:47):
sustaining a pretty large jaguar population in in in nun
sat in Santa Rosa National Park because you know, they
can just actually patrol just like we do, the waterline
up and down and when the rest two look coming out,
they're not super fast on land, and the jaguar just
grasped them, drags them up to the vegetation and then
as you know, it depends if they have babies. Or not,

(31:08):
But it takes about two to three days, so that
turtles gone and then they started hunting again. M So
all kinds of questions are running through my mind about this.
So first of all, I apologize if you alluded to
the answers to either of these already. One is, do
we have any idea what the queue is that triggers
all of the turtles to come up onto the beach,
because you said they gather offshore and then at some

(31:32):
point they all just start coming in waves. Do you
do we know why that happens or what causes it? So,
I mean the why there is some hypotheses. One of
them is a predator prevention strategy, so that you pretty much,
just as when you're nesting, you're trying to overwhelm any
potential predator. Uh. And then when the babies are hatching,
since they're all hatching at the exact same time, right,

(31:53):
so you have to think about half a million nests,
or even if it's just a few hundred thousand nests
hatching at the same time time, that means there's millions
of millions of babies that just you know, scramble to
make their way to to the ocean. So again, you know,
if your predator, you can eat one or two or
three or even more, but it's not going to be
all of them. So it's it's a pretty pretty good

(32:14):
predator prevention strategy. So that's the why. Possibly the how
that is actually a question that we have answered to
a certain degree. Um so we know that it has
something to do with the lunar cycle, So that is
pretty much solid. We know that for decades already. And
it depends on a little bit on the synchronized mass

(32:36):
nesting beaches. So we have the Yeah, the majority of
the beaches actually in Central America, so Mexico has a
really large one, Costa Rica has a large one, and
they're like smaller ones in in in Panama and in
in Nicarago as well, And it depends a little bit
of which beach we're talking about. What the lunar cycle is.

(32:57):
For Oustinale, it is usually the week before our new moon.
So that means that is a pretty good indicator that
I would say probably of the time is giving you
a good idea of when this studibad is going to happen.
Whereas in Escobiya, I think it also happens sometimes like
a week before full moon. So um, yeah, I mean

(33:17):
exceptions always exist in ospinal as well, but usually the
indicator is new moon. And then what we don't know though,
is so you can see already, you know, let's say
it's like about a week before new moon, and you
see already in the wives, you know, thousands of turtles
just swimming. The heads are bobbing up, and you're just like, okay, okay,
it's going to be happening every every moment. Now, what

(33:39):
we don't know is what is the actual whistle that
I've talked about, You know, what is it really that
says it is now and not tomorrow and not yesterday,
but exactly now, And that we don't know. So they
have been you know, kind of high paclity, such as maybe, um,
the females are having some type of pheromone that they're
releasing and if it reaches a certain concentration that might

(34:02):
be triggering it. But we don't really know. We really
don't know. The other thing I was wondering was, um,
do we have any indication whether the incredible density of
the nesting is is that totally natural or I When
I see something like that, I would kind of wonder
is that something that could be caused by I don't know,
changes that are going on, like anything that humans do

(34:26):
would drive that sort of incredible density. Do we know
anything about that? Yeah, well it's not that we have
like solid data, and so I would say probably not
human cost. What I would say though, is that we
I really curious a scientist to study the evolution and
the progression of Atribada nesting beaches because Austin now actually

(34:49):
has a village for more than a hundred and thirty years,
so that means there's really good historical data of you know,
when they started to have an actual synchronized mass nesting,
because it's not that they always had one, you know,
so it started at some point um and it's still there.
But and that's more or less. My personal hypothesis is

(35:12):
that I really think adri Bada beach choose a kind
of getting going extinct at one point if you would
let them take the natural course, because it is a
solid it's a serious overuse of the beach, right, you
have so much nest and you can see from the
studies at austeonalis well like the hatching success just over
twenty thirty years just like it's consistently decreasing, and if

(35:35):
you would just let the beach do what it would
usually do, or like the turtles to what they usually do,
the hatching success right which is probably be zero at
one point, so there would be no next generation. But
I mean, I have the suspicion it's really hard to
prove that the you know, the egg harvest is probably
are it officially keeping that beach alive, you know, because

(35:58):
it is raising the hatching success to at least the
level there is still babies, but it's very low. So
that actually might be detrimental to the population later on
because maybe they would have already looked for another beach
right at this point. What makes me think that is
is that we have two new beaches now that weren't
Ali Bada beaches before that. Now, in the past i

(36:19):
would say six or seven years, have started to have
synchronized mass nest things, and they are getting more and more.
In the beginning it was like one per year, and
then it was like three, and I think the last
one was like almost eight synchronized mass nestings and one
of them which is and it's getting bigger and bigger
as well, So I think that's you know, there is
a natural life cycle to an auti bada, which which

(36:40):
logically it makes sense, right if you if you over
use something, then at one point there is nothing more left,
like when you over use the soil for plants or else,
and so you have to look for something else. So, yeah,
it will be really interesting to kind of study that.
You know, how new synchronized mass nesting beaches are developing,
how long they really stay like that and until the

(37:01):
turtles move on somewhere else, and also what triggers it, right,
because if it would be really some kind of mechanism
that is just going over the next generation, that would
be I mean Olive Ridley's reach sexual maturity with about
fifteen to five years. So that's a lot like feedback cycle,
you know if you think about it. So maybe it's
something else. So can you explain how temperature plays a

(37:25):
role in the development of sea turtle eggs and then
and then how does climate change impact this process? Yeah,
so temperature in the life of sea turtles is super important,
as we already talked about it. You know, they needed
to warm up their body. But the unequol thing is
that the sex of sea turtles is determined by the
incubation temperature, so that means they do not have sex

(37:48):
chromosomes as we humans have, for example, so you know,
usually it's x x and you become female biologically, or
it's x y and your male biologically. And in sea
turtles is actually the second third of the incubation time.
That's where higher temperatures are leading to more females gradually.

(38:08):
Of course, it's not like a switch and it's all
females or all males, and cooler temperatures are leading to
more males. So in English at least they have this
you know, hot chicks and cool dudes, and if you
want to remember how that is. Interestingly though, it is
not the same in all turtles. Since turtles it's exactly that,
but there's other turtle species, freshwater turtles and tortoises that

(38:30):
actually sometimes have two peaks. So it's like, you know,
kind of middle temperature produces more males, and like really
cool and really hot temperaturesly do females. There's all kinds
of variation within that group of turtles, but the anti
turtles it is that, and that of course means nowadays
where we are having rising temperatures because of climate change,

(38:51):
and a lot of places we are overproducing females. So
there's beaches where we have pretty much almost high you
present females that we're producing, So there's some status. It
really depends on which region you're looking at and what species.
But that is like you know, one male to nine
females or even worse worst case scenarios than that, which

(39:14):
might not be a problem right now because like I said,
it takes a while to the reach sexual maturity. But
once they've reached sexual maturity, and if population sizes are
already small, there might be just not enough males around
to fertilize the females and eggs. So that is really
concerning um. And in that sense, and some of the

(39:35):
you know, conservation measures that we have is for example,
that we're shading our nests in order to you know,
artificially increase the amount of males that we're producing, just
to counteract a little bit those those impacts that climate change. UM, yeah,
it's causing. UM. I had a question, you want to
come back to something you said earlier about the resiliency
of sea turtles, and you mentioned mentioned like missing flippers

(39:58):
and injuries that that they have survived. I was thinking
about this recently because I got to snorkele in um
in Mau among some green sea turtles, and I got
to observe them there, and there was one in particular,
and I know it was I kept seeing it because
it had a number tag on its shell and it
was missing a front flipper. And every time I would

(40:20):
see it, I would I would marvel at it because
I and then I would ask questions in my head how.
I was wondering, like, has this a turtle, I mean
that has that has been injured and then has been
re released? Or is this just how resilient they are
that it could sustain an injury like this survive And
you know, I mean how does I guess they just
have questions about just just how they manage that. It

(40:41):
seems like, I know, if I lost a limb in
the ocean, I would just be dead. Uh how does
the sea turtle pull it off? Yeah? So I think
they have incredible healing powers to just say what I've seen.
For example, I remember one particular level bag that came
with absolutely horrible cuts from she must have gotten somehow
entangled in fisher nets. Luckily, she was freed, maybe by

(41:05):
the fisherman themselves, but it was just a nasty cut
all across like the soft part of her shoulders. It
was bleeding, it was in facted. She was really smelling
as well. It was pretty disgusting. And um, so sea
turtles don't nest just once per season, so they usually nest,
you know, in the case of leather bags on average,
about five to seven times and have very distinct rensting intervals.

(41:29):
So I know in other backs its about ten days.
So that means I knew already, okay, you know, she
will come back hopefully, and so you know, the next
time she came back, I kind of had some antibiotic
appointment that I was, you know, trying and had like
an antibotic pill that I just broke open and tried
to like clean it a little bit. Um. But the
interesting thing was really within the ten days that she
came back, the wound already had pretty much clothes. I mean,

(41:53):
it was just like, you know, pretty deep, and you
could see, you know, it was like through the fat
layer and you could see things that I think you're
not supposed to be seeing. Um. Yeah, and it is
just so impressive of how quickly in ten days, you know,
the whole thing had already pretty much closed. And yeah,
she had an ugly sca, but she's definitely able to

(42:15):
live or in the other Like another example is that
I saw a female that came up onto the beach.
So I caught her in the process of just walking
up on the beach, and she was dragging something behind her,
and you know, it looked like fishing net, but I
wasn't sure, so I kind of went closer, switched on
my light and what I saw I was, Yes, it
was fishing net, but she also pretty much dragged her

(42:37):
dead leg that was literally just hanging on on like
one ligament, totally blown up, and oh, I mean the
whole net, like the whole fishing I had already cut
through the entire bone um and she was pulling, you know,
this dead leg on that ligament and there's like a
huge bulk of fishing line behind her and she was

(42:59):
still nest I mean, I mean, this is just mind blowing,
right if you think about it, it's just like, Okay,
she's probably in pain, she is in the process of
losing an entire flipper, but this urge to come onto
the beach to still reproduce. It is so big. And
I'm pretty sure that she survived quite honestly, because I
mean where it was cutted, I had already closed, so

(43:22):
I just kind of the fishing gear um, and then
you know, I could tell that she kind of flinched
when I was trying to touch the one ligament. So
what I did is because I didn't have anything, you know,
I didn't want to cut through it, so I just
took like one little piece of fishing eye and just
like pretty much did a tourney catch, just like you know,
try to find it off from all but supply and
out great would just fall off eventually. But yeah, it

(43:48):
gets scory than one of the things I saw when
we were coming in here. I know you've talked before
the incident with the straw and the turtles nose, but
one of the ones I saw was a a video
you had uploaded where you were trying to remove a

(44:09):
fishing net from a turtle's neck and that it had
cut in all around the neck. I think was it
a leather back or um that was an olive red
lay as well. Yeah, it was exactly in front of
us to now so that one of those synchronized mass
inesting beaches, and yeah, that wasn't very typical. I mean,
you know, I don't always have the chance to film
everything that we see because you know, sometimes for me

(44:31):
it's more important to actually you know, release them and
not thinking about it. They can obously film it. Um.
But yeah, that's a very typical side unfortunately. I mean
this one was a little bit worse because it was
around her neck. A lot of times it's you know,
it's the flippers, um. But yeah, I mean usually what
all you can do is like, you know, believe what
she has and then just hope that the wounds will

(44:52):
pretty much heal themselves, which usually they do, um. Because
it's even not that easy to kill a turtle. So
we had another case where I was called in um
and there was a turtle on the beach that had
been what we don't know what came first, but dogs
were around her, had pretty much attacked her, had eaten
into her body cavity, so from you know, when you

(45:14):
have the heads and the shell, so like the soft
pipe is the shoulder part, and so the dogs had
just taken chunks out of it, and she was in
a really bad shape like way worse than Yeah, I
did not think, Okay, I can just throw her in
the water and she's going to be fine. So I
contacted the VETS that is close by. But of course
the veterinarians are usually not specialized in reptiles, so reptiles

(45:36):
are very specific. Which even when we talked about you know,
like in the aftermath of Sea turtle straw videos, like
why didn't you take it to a vent? Why didn't
you like anesthesize the turtles? It is actually not that
easy and pretty dangerous to anesthesize the reptile because the
actual therm and like how the metabolism works, more times

(45:56):
than not, you might actually end up killing them. So
you know, um, you have to really find a vet
that knows how to dose everything to not kill them.
And most of the times they would also up to
not do it and rather do whatever they need to
do um without yeah, tranquilizing or anesthesizing the animal, just
because it is so dangerous. And then of course, you know,

(46:18):
you go to the VETS that is specialized for cats
and dogs and you're like kind of like, hey, I
have this tea turtle and he was like yeah, that
is like oh god, she needs to be euthanized. And
then it was really interesting because we had to look
up in the internet how to euthanize a turtle and
it is really I mean, um, first of all, it's

(46:39):
you can use a toxine that we didn't have at hand,
So we had to find pretty much like other ways
of how we could you know, humanely euthanize that turtle
because I had seen it already. When coachers, um, you know,
try to to take the meat of turtles or the
eggs that are still in in in inside of the overducts,
they of times don't even bother killing the turtles, so

(47:02):
they hack off the flippers and then they kind of
cut out the plastron, you know, the belly pipe, and
just open the turtle and the turtles fully conscious in
a life. And I have seen turtles that had literally
no organs left anymore besides the lung and the heart
because the meat was taken, the eggs were taken, and
the heart was still beating. I mean, it's it's absolutely

(47:24):
it's it's it's really really sad and really impacting to
see that. So we had this turtle we needed to euthanize,
and I mean, the only way of how when I
was talking to two vests were like, well, you have
to drill a hole into her head and you make
sure that you really hit the brand as quickly as possible,
so you know, she goes quickly and doesn't feel anything anymore.

(47:44):
So it was a little bit traumatizing for all of us,
I can tell you that. But yeah, because we had
to find, like, you know, a drill somewhere. It was. Yeah,
it was not a dosn't thing that we we had
to do them. But it shows you a lot about
resilience and also you know how they work and how
they yeah, not die, I guess that quickly. So you're

(48:06):
talking about the the idea of the sea turtle being
attacked by dogs um or even by humans. It makes
me realize the question that apologies if this is a
very dumb question. So we have experience with some terrestrial
turtles like the box turtle that can fully retract inside
the shell. Is that not Is there any kind of
retraction defensive capability and sea turtles or can they partially

(48:28):
do that or not at all? Or what? This is
a really good question. I don't think it's a dumb
question at all, because it's one of the most identifying
features off sea turtles that they can not retract the
limbs into the shell, so they can kind of pull
their head in a little bit like in the case
of example, green turtles um, but not really so it's

(48:49):
not you know, like this typical image that you have
where they just like disappear into their shell. They can't.
So the reason of why that is is, first of all,
they have their shell has become very streamlined in in
the course of evolution, so they're like super hydrodynamic um
which also decreases the space inside of the shell if

(49:10):
you think about like these high domed tortoises for example
that we have on land. And then the other thing
is is that the main locomotive, like the main engine,
are the front flippers, right, so they have you know,
they it's almost looks like like an airplane. The why
how they like kind of go through the water or
like flying, like bursting and kind of flapping, you know,

(49:32):
their power strokes with both flippers. But that means they're
um that chest muscles have grown so large that they
have taken up a lot more space than in other turtles.
And that is also one of the reasons that they
can't retract it into their shell anymore. And now in
terms of just sort of the general temperament of the

(49:52):
sea turtle, um, do you do you find that like
different sea turtle species or even individuals have different demeanors
or some shire around human divers or snorkelers for example. Yeah,
I mean there's definitely a difference between species. So olive
redleys and leather bags are seldomly face, especially if we're
talking about mass nesting turtles. So if you have solitary

(50:14):
nesting turtles a little bit more skittish, um, but your
leather bags and olive redleys are really kind of like,
I don't care, so you can handle them while they're nesting.
So they're in this like you know, supposed to be
nesting trends that really kind of you know, they're only
concentrating of dropping their eggs and and and anything that
happens around them. They really don't seem to notice. But

(50:35):
in the case of hawk spills and greens, both of
those turtle species as super skittish, so it comes you know,
even when they come up, even when they're already dropping
the eggs, which you know, supposedly the in the nesting trends.
The protocols that we have in place usually means, okay,
if you're not able to you know, really carefully collect
eggs or whatever, better, don't touch them. Let they do
their thing, and then we're going to collect the data

(50:57):
so you know, we don't disturb the actual egg lane
process as and then of course within individuals. UM, when
we were doing especially the olive redly sampling, I always
felt that smaller turtles were way more faisty than like
the big, big ones. Um maybe it had something to
do with, you know, being more edgile because you were smaller.

(51:18):
I don't know. It's sometimes also had seemed to have
something to do of how high the temperatures were. So
you know, if you grab a turtle that maybe has
just woken up and hadn't had time to really go
to the surface and sun basketball to really kind of
wake up and get their metabalism going, um, there might
be a little bit more sluggish. Then if you have

(51:39):
one turtle that has been already you know, absorbed all
the heat energy and the muscles are all ready for action,
and then they start fighting you when you have them
on the boat. Now I realized there's a lot to
impact with this question, and I think we've touched on
it a little bit at least already in the conversation.
But what are the biggest threats to see turtles today
and when? What the current state of turtle conservation? What

(52:02):
are the most important things we we are doing to
help them and can do to help them? Yeah, so
first up, I think we have to say very clearly
that all seven sea turtles species are considered endangered in
one shape or form. I mean, this's like you know
the i U c N that is um cur writing
the Red List of Endangered Species as having certain categories

(52:24):
uh and different sea turtles species and even different within
the species, different populations have sometimes different status is. But
I think as a generalizing term, they are all somehow
endangered um nowadays. And then if we think about the threats,
it's just it's not just one. I think it's pretty

(52:45):
much the exact same ones that when we talk about
our ocean in general, it's exactly the same things that
are also endangering sea turtles. So of course the biggie
is climate change. So we already talked about temperatures that
are super important to see turtles and a rising temperatures
are creating you know, issues with the yeah, overproduction of females.

(53:06):
But the other biggie is also um sea level rice,
So we have nesting habitat that is disappearing because sea
levels are rising and nesting beaches are disappearing. Then the
big category that is next is of course ocean pollution,
and there we can talk about oil spills that are
happening way too frequently and it's not always at the
press reports about it. We can talk about the not

(53:28):
so visible pollution through fertilizers and pesticides that comes from
our agriculture, agricultural activities on land that leads to diseases
such as fiberprobic ploma which is kind of a virus
disease that causes really crazy tumors and sea turtles UM.
Then of course plastic pollution, So every single species of

(53:51):
sea turtles has been documented to have ingested plastic already. UM.
A lot of times when we have dead turtles we
cut them open that is full of plastic. Interesting fact,
the first ingestion of plastic and sea turtles was actually
found in leather bags. So the first paper that was
published on that was published in the nineteen eighties, and

(54:13):
then the same author actually went back to all records
from like I think the six season seventies to see
for evidence if somebody else had been recording plastic, and
they did find that even before that time, people had
already found plastic in in in sea turtles in leather
bags specifically. And then the other thing, of course, is
over exploitation. So in many, many, many developing countries in Asia, Africa,

(54:39):
South America, Central America, people still take sea turtle eggs
because they believe either they're better than chicken eggs or
they believe it's a type of natural viagraa so older
men try to increase their sex drive by yeah, by
by eating sea turtle eggs. But there's also still a

(55:00):
ult you're around consuming sea turtle meat, especially the meat
of green turtles, which as you know, dates back many
many centuries to sailors and other seafares that love taking
turtles because they're just there's amazing protein source and turtles
don't need much so they don't need much water, they
don't need much food. But to keep them alive sometimes

(55:20):
you can tie them outside of the boat and when
you need one, you just slaughter them and then you
have fresh meat. And then um, the other one is
the in the exploitation range is the seatootle shell trap,
which is affecting especially hawks bill turtles, so tortoise shell
I think you might have seen the pattern. Um yeah,

(55:40):
it's for for jewelry, for or for forum for glasses,
for reading glasses and else. Um yeah, that's also long history.
And then of course the other biggie is um over fishing.
So industrial fishing just doesn't just you know, catch target species,
but how the incredible amount of bycatch what we call

(56:02):
incidental takes, So it's species that were not meant to
be fished but end up in those nets or on
those lines as well. And since sea turtles, like I said,
already need to breathe air, um, they're actually sometimes a
lot of times not able to surface and drown on
those nets. And we it's really it's an overwhelming number

(56:23):
of turtles that die every single year in fishing operations,
and it is really sad, especially when you think about
overexploitation in needs in turtle shell and also in in
um in the fishing lines. Is that you know, there
is a very low chance for babies to survive, but
once you've reached a certain side as a sea turtle,

(56:44):
there's really not that many natural predators, and since it
takes such a long time for a sea turtle to
reach sexual maturity, each individual is so valuable to the population,
and it's exactly those individuals that die, you know, when
you want to have neat, when you want to have
turtle shell, or if you have bycatch. Now, when you
mentioned the effects of plastics on sea turtles, with the

(57:06):
human activity that causes this primarily be the high volume
use of of single use plastics or other things too,
or what do you think is the you know, the
day to day human activity that contributes most of that
in the ocean. I think there's a lot of misconception
about how plastic, first of all, ends up in our
ocean and how plastic waste is created. It is very

(57:28):
overwhelming of how much tons of plastic we are having
each year, and it's increasing exponentially. So in just two
thousand and fifteen, which is already six years back, we
were already produced between four hundred and five hundred million
metric tons of of of plastic each year, which good
is mainly for food wrapping and packaging, and about produced

(57:53):
only for single use. Right, So you have this lyrical
product plastic that can last for high rids of years,
and you're using it for the use of like literary
seconds or minutes, and a lot of times, especially those
single use plastics are first of all, not recyclable at all,
because there are two lights in the way of how
you know recycling is processed. But even if they were

(58:17):
recycling recyclable, the reality is that only about four to
nine percent of the plastic really gets recycled. So you know,
a lot of people feel good because it's like, hey,
I recycle, I'm not the back like you know, I
dispose of my trash responsibly. But the problem is most developing,

(58:37):
its most developed countries are actually sending their plastic trash
to developing countries. So the US, Europe, European countries, we're
are sending our trash to Asia. Used to send it
to China, but now it's going to Indonesia, to Malaysia,
to other places which have not a great waste management program.
And you know, since so little really like you know, recyclable,

(59:02):
it will end up in our oceans anyways. Right, So
even you at home, separated and you felt good about
yourself because you did a good job, but in the
end it will end up in landfills that might not
be so well managed, even within the U. S. If
you just think about you know, hurricanes, so you have
an open landfill, you know, the next hurricane that kind
of goes through, what do you think is going to

(59:23):
happen to your trash? You know, it's going to be
ending up in the waterways, and eventually it will also
end up in the ocean. So it's not just you know,
cruise boats or container ships that are creating all the
plastic trash, or the people that visit the beaches and
leave their trash behind. No, it's every single person in
the world that is contributing to the issue. I want

(59:44):
to make that very clear because that's always the easy
way out where people are just saying, well, I'm not
part of the problem. We're all part of the problem.
And I think the other problem is it's like the
convenience people are just so used to kind of rapid
consumption of food and everything and beverages and um in
the pandemic, now you know just the amount of takeout

(01:00:06):
that has been probably um yeah, perpetuated because you know
everybody is at home and wants to still eat something
from a restaurant. And so the style form containers, the
plastic bottles, the plastic cups, the plastic cutlery, all of
that needs to go somewhere, right And yeah, it usually
doesn't get recycled, and it will somehow end up in

(01:00:27):
our environment in one way or another. So that means
the only thing that we can really do is is
really try to reduce our use of plastic as much
as we can. And I'm not trying to say, you know, oh,
we need all to be like completely plastic free, because
that is it's a utopia that is not possible. I
mean my computer that I'm using to speak to you

(01:00:47):
right now, the you know, certain things that I use
for my science doctors that are using the syringdery. It's
just like there's certain advantages you know of plastic that
I think are super important for us as a species.
Is well, but do we really need to use plastic
for like, um, you know, to drink out of a
cup where we don't even need, ah, you know, a

(01:01:08):
straw in the first place. If if we're able body people,
we can just drink out of the cup or you know,
if you're getting take out, um, and you have all
your silver at home, why do you need to get
plastic cutlery? Right? It's just it's so easy. I get
it because you don't have to wash it up, you
just throw it out. But there is a price to it,
you know, there's always a price, and somebody has to
pay the price, and a lot of times, unfortunately it's

(01:01:31):
the wildlife, um that is praying the price and not us.
Is there anything else that you think would be really
important to hit before we wrap up here? Very important?
I don't know. I just you know, want to motivate
people to really understand that there is a certain degree
that we have as there's a degree of power that
we have as consumer, right, So I do not want

(01:01:52):
to try to fool you into believing that the consumers
are the ones that are really you know, having to
carry all the responsibility for for example, of plastic pollution.
It's really the large companies that are creating most of
our our problem. But we can vote with our decision
like with our choices, right, So if if you spend
your money with a certain company, you're voting for that

(01:02:15):
money quite literally. So I just think we need to
be more conscious about how we're spending our money. And
I just always try to convince people just to consume less,
just buy less crap, because it's just like, you know,
I get it. Capitalism is trying to make you buy
more and more and tries to, you know, make you
believe that you need this newest thing. But it's it's

(01:02:35):
you know, it's not true. It really isn't true. And
I think we just need to be a lot more
conscientious of of our consumer behavior and then we just
become better consumers. I think. All right, well, Christine, thanks
so much for chatting with us today and sharing all
this great information about about about sea turtles. I feel

(01:02:56):
like I learned learned so much today about about the
the seven sea turtles we still have as well as
their you know, their their current plight. So I guess
what one thing to ask would be if anyone out
there listening to this, if they want to follow you
and your work online, where can they go to do so?
Where do you like to send people? Yeah, I'm pretty
active on Instagram, so I'm sea turtle biologists very easy.

(01:03:21):
If you guys want to check out my Instagram. I'm
trying to create content about you know, sea turtles and
about plastic pollution and just giving ideas of of what's
going on out in the field where I am. Um,
that's definitely one way. And yeah, if you guys want
to support my work, um, there is an app called
milky Wire where you can become multi supporters I think

(01:03:41):
starting at like about three or five dollars, so literally
just like as if you would invite me to coffee
each month. And that is a huge difference because that
is pretty much how we sustain our conservation efforts, um,
which is paying my guys that are patrolling the beaches
trying to keep the turtles safe from poachers and make
sure that the babies have a good chance of you know,
having a good start in life. Yeah. I think that's

(01:04:02):
probably the easiest way of connecting with me. Excellent, all right, Well,
well again again, thanks so much for taking time out
of your day to chat with us. This has been great. Yeah,
thank you so much for having me. It was fun
nording out about turtles all right. Thanks once more to
Christine Figner for taking time out of her day to
just chat with us about sea turtles and sea turtle conservation. Uh.

(01:04:25):
That This was a real blast, and if you would
like to to follow her on social media, uh, these
are a few of the places you can end just
in general on the internet. Here a few places you
can go on Instagram, Uh, she is a sea turtle biologist.
One word. On Facebook it is c F Figener. That's
f I g g e n e r. And on Twitter, uh,

(01:04:48):
she is Chris Figener, So that's Chris c h r
I s f I g g e n e r.
And you can also go to her website which is
Sea Turtle Biologist dot com. And then the coast organization
uh coasts dot cr on is the Instagram tag and
you can uh that one is also connected to uh

(01:05:09):
dr figeners Facebook account. We're gonna go and close it
out there, But if you want to listen to other
episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find
them in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed,
with core science and culture episodes publishing on Tuesdays and
Thursday's Artifact episode on Wednesday, Listener Mail on Monday, and
on Friday's we do a little weird house cinema. That's

(01:05:30):
our time to set the science aside and just focus
on a weird movie huge thanks as always to our
excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff

(01:05:56):
to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening
to your favorite shows.