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MGST Documentary Transcript |
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NAME: |
TIME CODE |
SCIRPT |
|
Narrator |
00:00:04 |
For
over 100 million years turtles like the
loggerhead have roamed the oceans |
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00:00:13
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their
migration routes are so long and so mysterious that nobody knows for sure
where they go… Until now |
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00:00:35 |
Gnaraloo
is in remote Western Australia where
the desert meets the sea |
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00:00:41 |
where
coral reefs teem with wildlife |
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00:00:45 |
one
of the last places on earth where |
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00:00:48 |
Loggerhead
sea turtles can safely return to
nest and where a team of scientists are
satellite tracking them for the first
time. |
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:01:01 |
Turtles
are fascinating animals they have
this really complicated life cycle where they nest on land they'll spend 10 15
years just floating in the open ocean as
hatchlings then as adults they'll make
migrations of hundreds maybe even thousands of kilometres, so it's a real mystery
trying to unravel that lifecycle and
understand it. |
|
Narrator |
00:01:31 |
But
what we do know is this, every year between
October and March mature female Loggerheads
return to the beach where they
hatched The
Loggerhead waits for the cover of darkness under the stars she
climbs the beach and digs away the surface
sand to form a body pit she
uses her hind flippers to slowly, meticulously
create an egg chamber and
she deposits around 112 eggs she
Pat's down the sand to protect her eggs
and keep them warm and
as dawn begins to break she returns to
the sea but
she's not alone on these beaches scientists
from the Gnaraloo Turtle Conservation Program are stationed here for months
at a time. |
|
Kimerley Nielsen Scientific Intern |
00:03:25 |
Normal
modern day living is not..not a thing here at Gnaraloo.. |
|
Melanie Do Scientific Intern |
00:03:29 |
I
can see like how it can be very similar to Antarctica cause you'r in a remote
region. |
|
Alister
Green |
00:03:35 |
There's
no shops, we don't have
any mobiles there there's no signal if you did have a mobile |
|
Nick
Goldsmith |
00:03:43 |
so
Loggerhead sea turtles they're endangered
worldwide and this population here in the southeast Indian Ocean population
it's the least well studied of the seven populations of Loggerheads around
the world. |
|
Narrator |
00:03:56 |
Realising
how important it was to protect them station owner Paul Richardson stepped in
with Head Scientist Karen Hattingh who has led and managed the Turtle
Monitoring Program since 2008. |
|
Karren
Hattingh |
00:04:09 |
Loggerheads
are endangered species
which means the population numbers are in serious decline. |
|
Paul
Richardson |
00:04:16 |
We
were the first ones to do the monitoring really and it proved that it was
quite significant roockery. They
are absolutely spectacular, they
are like prehistoric and the size of some of the females are just massive. |
|
Narrator |
00:04:33 |
Scientist
Jordy Thompson is Field Supervisor
for the project |
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:04:38 |
When
we're doing morning surveys you wake up at four forty two in the morning, hop
in the truck would come down to the beach andwe walk a stretch of beach
counting tracks trying to figure out what happened
whether they were successful nests or not figure out what species they
are. Then
if we're doing night surveys we'll leave home around 8 o'clock and then we'll
spend six hours walking these beaches
just back and forth back and forth trying to see as many turtles as we possibly
can and that allows us to evaluate how well we're doing at interpreting
tracks in the mornings so everything we can do to get more information
to understand them to inform conservation that's really really valuable. |
|
Narrator |
00:05:14 |
To
understand what the Turtles do when they leave the nesting beaches the
team attached satellite trackers to ten female turtles. |
|
Radio Call background audio: |
00:05:26 |
She
is only about a meter from the sea she is coming down hill, so I am going to
flip her in the next 2 minutes.. |
|
Radio Response & background audio: |
00:05:32 |
Stay,
we'll pick her up now
she's finished. Everyone
all right? |
|
background audio: |
00:05:36 |
Yep |
|
Aubrey
Strydom |
00:05:41 |
This
is a Loggerhead and she's just Finished,
she's come up, she's nested, she's
covered her chamber and she's filled in the body pit so she's finished doing
what she was going
to do and now we've taken her and and we'll put the tracker on her. |
|
background audio: |
00:06:01 |
watch
your fingers here |
|
Aubrey
Strydom |
00:06:06 |
We just
gently scrape off all the algae because we want to get down to the actual
keratin of the carapace so that we can get the glue to stick |
|
Narrator |
00:06:17 |
They
use a special glue that doesn't heat up while setting then an antifouling
agent to prevent algae and barnacles. |
|
Aubrey
Strydom |
00:06:28 |
I'm
happy with that |
|
Narrator |
00:06:34 |
The
glue takes hours to set, so the team has to wait into the small hours of the
morning |
|
Aubrey
Strydom |
00:06:56 |
So
this is Marloo, the second one we're letting
go we should see her come back she should nest in 12 to 16 days then she'll
head off back to a feeding ground and we'll find out where that is, it is
possible some of these my go as far Indonesia. |
|
Narrator |
00:08:11 |
Over
the next few weeks eight more turtles
are held,tagged and released |
|
Aubrey
Strydom |
00:08:18 |
She
is heading out now Shuffle
down this way! are
we having a break? So
have you got her balanced? Shuffle
down this way! So
we can tell our trackers working okay
she can walk off So I
think this is Gnarly ay? Gnarly's off on her journey |
|
Narrator |
00:08:39 |
Now
all the team can do is wait. |
|
Aubrey
Strydom |
00:08:42 |
This
is definitely the best part of the year when I do my turtle tracking for
sure. |
|
Narrator |
00:08:53 |
The
ten turtles set off and the satellite
trackers begin to plot their migrations for the first time |
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:09:02 |
Satellite
tracking sounds simple but it's really not, the trick is that the turtles
have to be at the surface at the time that satellite is passing overhead they
only spend
maybe thirty Seconds to a couple of minutes there so we only get typically
one or two satellite fixes per day. |
|
Narrator |
00:09:17 |
To
share the journeys with everyone the
team created a free app and people donated to give each turtle a name and this
allowed the general public to follow along these migrations in real time five
turtles Caretta, Ocean Eve, Tildy, Norm Alex
and Constance Winifred swim south down the treacherous coastline to Shark Bay |
|
Narrator |
00:09:52 |
Their
presence here confirms for the first
time that the turtles who nest at Gnaraloo use this area as a feeding ground and
what they feed on lives in the seagrass |
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:10:08 |
Seagrasses
are really the foundations of a
lot of marine ecosystems they also provide habitats to smaller species like clams
and mussels, crustaceans like blue crabs, sea snakes, juvenile fish and if you
see it from the air you can see these shallow seagrass beds that go for kilometers
and kilometers and that's prime feeding habitat. As
amazing as this environment is it's also
under threat right now and in 2011 there was an unprecedented marine heatwave
and that caused the die-off of a lot of the temperate sea grasses here in
Shark Bay these seagrass beds have largely disappeared in large parts of the
bay and as a crucial impact on all of the ecology
of the system. |
|
Narrator |
00:11:07 |
The
other five turtles Pulsy, Eugenie, Gwoonwardu,
Gnarly and Marloo swam north to foraging grounds near Onslow past 80 mile
beach and even beyond Broome over 1,500 kilometers away, of the turtles heading
north one in particular struck out on an unusual path this is Marloo and
nobody is sure where she's going. |
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:11:39 |
Marloo
made a turn and went straight offshore
several hundred kilometers |
|
Aubrey
Strydom |
00:11:44 |
deep
into the Indian Ocean out over the abyss
we are talking 4000 meters deep and we were watching her and wondering what
she's doing out there where she's going |
|
Narrator |
00:11:54 |
Is
Marloo about to make an international crossing?
|
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:12:03 |
and
this made us start to wonder
is this turtle actually going to show us that there's connectivity between
the Western Australian population in the Eastern Australian population
we've always thought that those are two separate things. |
|
Narrator |
00:12:20 |
Could
Marloo record the longest Loggerhead
journey of all time? |
|
Narrator |
00:12:36 |
Mean-while
the Gnaraloo hatchlings incubate emerging after about two and a half months,
the hatchlings push up from the bottom of the nest doing a relay as the leaders
get tired to reach the surface Loggerheads have an iron compound in their
brains called magnetite this allows them to navigate using the Earth's
magnetic field they will use this amazing ability to relocate this very
beach when they return to nest but
for now there are many obstacles in their
path and some take a while to get the hang things. |
|
Narrator |
00:13:39 |
But
learning to swim is the least of their
worries baby sea turtles are an easy target for a range of predators. |
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:13:51 |
Pretty
much everything is a predator of sea turtles their odds are about one in a
thousand of making it to sexual maturity and contributing back to the population
when their eggs in the nest they can be dug up by by wild dogs introduced
foxes have been a real problem as soon as the nest is exposed it
attracts the hunters predatory lizards like Perenties, sea birds like Pelicans. Ghost
Crabs are major predators they can kill
up to 30% or 40% of the the eggs in a clutch and there are tons of them here on
Gnaraloo beaches. as
the hatchlings get larger they only attract larger predators,
carnivorous fish like Groupers Snappers
and Barracudas even Moray Eels and
Reef Sharks when they get bigger so they
get massive as adults their shells will
be over a meter at that point really just the big things are there
predators like Tiger Sharks sometimes White Sharks sometimes even things
like Killer Whales and Salties it gets rarer as they get bigger. |
|
Narrator |
00:14:55 |
while
the team track Marloo, Jordy investigates the turtles feeding at shark bay |
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:15:05 |
The satellite
tagging tells us broadly where these turtles go but we know very little about
what they do when they get there and until recently we haven't been able to
have a window into their lives now we have underwater action cameras that we can
actually put on turtles for short term and show us exactly what they're doing. |
|
Narrator |
00:15:19 |
Jody
worked with Florida International University
to capture this never-before-seen footage. This
juvenile Loggerhead is hunting its favorite prey a Blue Crab but Blue Crabs
are fast and this
slow-moving Loggerhead needs a little more practice. This
female Loggerhead is approached by a
male he attempts to court her but she's not interested she repeatedly bites
at his shell and his head until he finally gets the message. Loggerheads
mate out at sea but sometimes they get a little carried away on the waves
like this pair. Loggerheads
tend to be solitary but they may have a little look if they come across one
another. This
green turtle is looking for a rock ledge perhaps to rest under or rub its
shell clean but this one's taken and the tenant
refuses to move out, it's a turtle standoff, they size each other up try to decide
who's bigger, until one of them admits his defeat and moves on |
|
Narrator |
00:17:03 |
Meanwhile
Marloo continues her migration. |
|
Aubrey
Strydom |
00:17:12 |
Marloo,
when she left the beach went up to Coral Bay and then she's strangely she went
a long way offshore into the Indian Ocean and then through the Timor Sea it
took her seven months to get to stop moving actually and get to Beagle Bay just
north of Darwin and then we saw her hovering around just south of Melville Island
for about three or four weeks. One Sunday
I noticed that the signals were just
coming from one spot on the beach |
|
Narrator |
00:17:34 |
what
happened to Marloo why has she spent so
long on one beach |
|
Aubrey
Strydom |
00:17:38 |
A
bit worried about her there, so the next day I rang Rachel Groom if
maybe if the Tiwi Rangers are in the area they could go and have a look see if
she's all right. |
|
Narrator |
00:17:51 |
Something
doesn't seem right so the team race against time to organise a helicopter
search |
|
DR.
Rachel Groom |
00:17:57 |
The turtle
was in a really challenging location
it's surrounded by some really difficult sandbanks to negotiate by boat we
basically had no other choice to get there but by chopper. we
just have a tarp, knives,gaffer tape, we've
got a weapon with us because we're expecting to see a Croc on the beach there
usually is a Croc around in a beach in the Northern Territory. |
|
DR.
Rachel Groom |
00:18:25 |
As
soon as we hit the beach we've all
started scanning looking away an turns
out the turtle was exactly where the GPS said. |
|
Narrator |
00:18:39 |
But
when they arrived it's too
late |
|
DR.
Rachel Groom |
00:18:40 |
when
we landed and had a look at this animal, It's quite a sad moment quite a
large turtle just lying on the beach by itself it seemed quite a sad ending
to such a significant journey. |
|
Narrator |
00:18:54 |
Marloo
has already passed away |
|
DR.
Rachel Groom |
00:18:56 |
We're
both very keen to do the necropsy and really understand what and how it may
have died |
|
Narrator |
00:19:02 |
but
her story wasn't over the
team rush Marloo back to the clinic for a final necropsy. |
|
DR.
Rachel Groom |
00:19:10 |
There
was some significant algal growth on the turtle's back and all over the tag
as well as quite surprised that it was sending such a strong signal. Shes'
got gooseneck barnacles we could see as well which also suggests she's been
hanging out in deep water for quite a long time. She appeared
to be very emaciated we know that
her body weight was, was well under what was recorded at the nesting Beach almost
half of her body weight was lost in
that migration. |
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:19:34 |
She
had lost half of her
fore flipper they had actually healed all the way over which suggests that
it happened pretty early on in her migration. |
|
DR.
Rachel Groom |
00:19:41 |
That's
where she would get most
of her power from to be swimming |
|
Narrator |
00:19:45 --> |
How
did Marloo lose her front flipper? |
|
DR.
Rachel Groom |
00:19:47 --> |
shark
attacks is an obvious one, getting entangled
in a net or some sort of pot you know a fishing Cray line something like
that. The
journey that she's taken she diverted into some serious eddie's it
appears that she has tried to right her journey somewhat to get back to the coast
but she obviously didn't have the strength the currents were stronger than her
she's missing that power from her front flipper. |
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:20:12 |
The
other thing that the necropsy
showed us was that there was nothing in her gut when she died which means
she had died of malnutrition or starvation a couple reasons for that possibly
either she wasn't able to feed effectively because she couldn't swim and
catch her prey also turtles are known to fast during a lot of their migrations
and so perhaps her migration was just so long she wasn't able to get to
where she wanted to be near shore to feed and that's why she ended up dying. |
|
Narrator |
00:20:36 |
It's
been a sad story for Marloo But
the project revealed many incredible firsts
Loggerhead
sea turtles We
learned a lot more about their courting behavior and aggression and the
enormous distances they cover putting them at risk in shipping lanes We
realised just how spread out their feeding grounds are and the diverse threats
they face across such a large Area
Above
all we understand our next challenge
to protect the nesting beaches at
Gnaraloo which Loggerheads depend on for their survival. |
|
Paul
Richardson |
00:21:43 |
The
turtles are fantastic for people to see, next year really is when our federal
funding does finish with all the cutbacks and stuff there is a good chance we
won't get anymore funding. |
|
Karren
Hattingh |
00:21:55 |
Preserving
these areas for future
generations it's also a question of protecting biodiversity. |
|
DR.
Rachel Groom |
00:22:00 |
So maintaining
the integrity of these habitats is critical to their survival. |
|
DR. Jordan Thompson Program Assistant |
00:22:04 |
I like
to think that the information we're getting from satellite tracking and from cameras
on Turtles is giving us new ammunition for solving these problems and
for making sure that future generations can enjoy the sea turtles and
marine life in general the way the |