Most people have heard about the huge island of plastic rubbish in the north Pacific. There is, however, another lesser acknowledged form of rubbish that plagues our seas today: ghost nets.

For the past 10 years, the Frickers have gone “turtling” with biologist Dr. Mike James of the Canadian Sea Turtle Network (CSTN). The team has worked together since, contributing to a long list of scientific information important to the conservation of leatherbacks.

The vast majority of sea turtle studies happen on beaches when females emerge to nest, yet sea turtles spend virtually all of their lives at sea. In spite of those challenges, since 1998 the Barbados Sea Turtle Project (BSTP) of the University of the West Indies, Barbados, has been monitoring hawksbill turtles on foraging sites at depths of up to 40 meters (131 feet).

Nearly all of captive rearing facilities for sea turtles have closed because of sea turtles’ endangered status, but some, like Corail Farm, have been redefined to live on in a new light. To follow their story is to follow the changing landscape of human interest and intervention in the lives of sea turtles.

Until 1988, the Australian flatback was still so poorly understood that it was considered to be in the same genus as the green turtle. In the short time since then, science not only has renamed the flatback, but also has seemingly rediscovered Australia’s own sea turtle. This SWOT Feature Article presents a regional scale map of flatback nesting throughout its range.

Where are the primary nesting beaches? Where are the foraging areas for turtles originating from those beaches? How do turtles migrate between those areas? Incredibly, the gaps in our understanding of sea turtle biology that Archie Carr highlighted more than half a century ago continue to drive much of today’s sea turtle research worldwide.

n recent years, the issue of climate change has received a good deal of attention from media, governments, and communities around the world. But what does climate change mean for sea turtles and their habitats?

Sea turtle researchers are often asked seemingly simple questions: How much do leatherbacks weigh? How many eggs do they lay? Are their numbers declining, and will they become extinct? Research has revealed that the answer to each of those age-old queries for leatherbacks is consistent: it depends.

One of the great difficulties in studying marine animals is that they spend most of their lives in places where humans can’t go. In 1986, biologist Greg Marshall had an idea, a new way to reveal this hidden world. This idea resulted in Crittercam— an animal-borne camera and data-logging device that records behavioral and ecological observations from the unique perspective of the creature wearing the device.

One of the gravest fishery concerns is that of incidental capture, or bycatch, which accounts for the deaths of tens of thousands of turtles annually—deaths that are unintended, unwanted even by the fishers involved, and preventable. With years of data, world opinion, and technology combining to make the problem solvable, the fight against sea turtle bycatch may be reaching its tipping point at last.