Complexity And Variation In Loggerhead Sea Turtle Life History, Biol. Lett. Bookmark and Share

Excerpts: Juvenile loggerhead sea turtles spend more than a decade in the open ocean before returning to neritic waters to mature and reproduce. It has been assumed that this transition from an oceanic to neritic existence is a discrete ontogenetic niche shift. We tested this hypothesis by tracking the movements of large juveniles collected in a neritic foraging ground (...). Our work shows that the shift from the oceanic to neritic waters is both complex and reversible; some individuals move back into coastal waters and then return to the open ocean for reasons that are still unclear, sometimes for multiple years. (...)