Slow Breaking News: A Giant Tortoise Revival

With science and good luck, 158 young tortoises were reintroduced to Floreana Island in the Galapagos. Plus, an ancient sea turtle stampede.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:17Ira Flatow?

  Science Friday is supported by MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:36Flora Lichtman?

  Hey, I'm Flora Lichtman, and you're listening to Science Friday. It seems like the world is moving ever faster with news alerts that change from one hour to the next. So we decided it might be a good idea to focus on some slow-moving stories. Coming out of his shell is SyFry chief turtle and tortoise correspondent, Charles Burquist. Welcome.

• 1:00Speaker 03

  Hey, Flora.

• 1:01Flora Lichtman?

  You have been on the Glacial Turtle Tortoise Beat at SyFry for over a decade, I understand.

• 1:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, this started in 2012 when Lonesome George, the famous Galapagos tortoise, died. He'd been kind of a conservation icon as the last of a lot. And so I ended up producing this memorial obituary segment, which involved getting a live sat phone conversation between Ira and the late tortoise conservationist Linda Caillot from the Galapagos.

• 1:30Flora Lichtman?

  Amazing.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  I should note a follow-up on that. Like, in 2020, some genetics analysis led researchers to believe that George's line may not be completely lost. So that's good news.

• 1:40Flora Lichtman?

  Oh, I love that. Good news already. Can we, before we get going, please tell me the difference between a turtle and a tortoise?

• 1:47Speaker 03

  OK, so all tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. Tortoises are specifically a subset of turtles that are primarily land-dwelling, whereas turtles can include both aquatic and not-aquatic species.

• 2:04Flora Lichtman?

  OK, so back to the Galapagos. This year, there are some exciting developments in tortoise conservation.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so not Lonesome George, but another subspecies of Galapagos tortoise. This one's from Floreana Island. So there's 13 major islands in the Galapagos and about the same number of distinct tortoise subspecies across those islands.

• 2:28Speaker 03

  Tortoises on Floreana had been pretty much wiped out, but earlier this year, conservationists released 158 young tortoises onto the island. I had a chance to talk with Penny Becker. She's CEO of the group Island Conservation. That was one of the partners in this big release effort. She told me a kind of astonishing story about what happened to the Floreana tortoise on the island, which involved both invasive species and settlers who came.

• 2:55Speaker 04

  The tortoises were directly utilized by the settlers and by all of the sailors. I've heard they were eaten as food sources. They were also used, the story is I've heard, they were used as ballast for ships, like live tortoises were utilized in that way.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  They couldn't find a rock?

• 3:15Speaker 04

  I know.

• 3:18Speaker 04

  I don't know, but that actually turned out to potentially be one of the reasons why we have tortoises today. The sort of myth story is that the reason that we have the genetics of the Floreana tortoises at all is because someone picked up these tortoises and put them on a ship. And then they took them off the ship and put them on another island. So the whole reason we had tortoises might be because they were utilizing them on these ships and then offloaded them as cargo onto another island.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Wow. So these offloaded tortoises, how close do we think they are to the the true original Floreana tortoises?

• 4:02Speaker 04

  This is one of those things where both science and good luck came together so that we have Floreana tortoises today. It just so happens that there are some caves on Floreana where there were tortoise remains that were there, which preserve the DNA of those species. That's the only way we know what the true genetics and DNA of Floreana tortoises were like. And then as um as our long-term partners and scientists that were looking at tortoises across all the islands, they thought, hey, these tortoises on this other island, that looks like there's different types. What's that all about? So they started doing some

• 4:44Speaker 04

  genetic analyses and were able to match a few of the individuals that they discovered on this other island to the genetics of the Floreana tortoises. So we believe that there were some um Floreana tortoises that were pretty pure bred on this other island that were then brought into captivity and um and then interbred with a few other tortoises, but in a way that tried to maintain as much of those genes of the Floreana population as you could. And that's what we have today.

• 5:21Flora Lichtman?

  Wow, amazing. First of all, I love the excitement in Penny Becker's voice. You can hear it as she's talking. But it sounds like they took this line of tortoises from another island that looked similar to the Floreana gene pool, and then they bred them? Is that right?

• 5:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they they ended up over the course of several years with about 20 individual animals involved in this breeding effort. And from those, they raised 158 young tortoises. They raised them to between eight and 13 years old. So to give a picture, that's like about 18 inches in size, a 30 to 50 pound chonk of turtle. But she said that they're, you know, basically, these are preteens in turtle years. They're not going to be mature enough to breed till they're like 25 or so. But now these 158 tortoises are free on Floreana, ranging around, although they do have transmitter tags to help track and monitor them.

• 6:17Flora Lichtman?

  That's crazy. It's like they're going to college or something. You know what I mean? Like wild times. A bunch of preteens released on an island by themselves. It sounds like a reality show.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, she she described them as finding their way on Floreana. And you know, she said that once upon a time, there were probably thousands of tortoises on this island. So they planned to release more next year and the year after that. And at least so far, it turns out that they seem to be really taking to the island. I asked Penny Becker about the moment they were released. I'm thinking of seeing, you know, people release the panther back into the jungle or whatever, and they open up the crate and it leaps out. I don't see that happening with the tortoises.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  You know, sometimes when you see these releases of different animals, they sort of like are a bit hesitant to get out of the box or to to see themself in that environment. That was not the case with the tortoises. From the moment they were able to be, you know, released from from the crates that they were delivered in, they just started out and they wasted no time. Every green leaf along their way, they're eating it and they're went in every particular direction and started exploring. They did not care that we were there watching them. They just got out and they started doing their thing right away.

• 7:38Flora Lichtman?

  It's like the slow motion version of the panther leap.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Nobody's gonna get knocked over by a by a tortoise leaping out of the cage.

• 7:49Flora Lichtman?

  What was that moment like for Penny Becker?

• 7:51Speaker 03

  You know, I asked her about that exact thing.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  It was a fantastic experience. One of the things that was the most exciting about this particular moment is that these tortoises were never experienced on this island in any of our lifetimes. And so I think it was really momentous for the community to understand that the things that they heard from their grandfathers and were just stories in the past was actually coming true. There was not a dry eye when we did the ceremony with the community and some of the kids named the tortoises that were gonna share their home. It was such an emotional, joyful, amazing experience. We're lucky at island

• 8:39Speaker 04

  conservation because we get to see the promise, especially what's possible on an island, right? It's a special place with a lot of endemic species and because it's a closed system, you can see nature come back just like that. And in in this case, where we've been working towards the restoration of Floreana for 15 years plus with the community, to be able to celebrate that with them was really meaningful. You know, I remember talking to Veronica, the leader of the Floreana community, and she said, I can't believe we have gotten to this place after so many years.

• 9:18Flora Lichtman?

  That's really lovely. It's profound. I mean, we rarely get good news conservation stories, so I love it. Thank you for bringing it, Charles.

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, she stressed that this tortoise reintroduction process is part of a larger context, right? Just releasing tortoises onto the island isn't enough. They've had to remove other invasive species. They have a list of about a dozen other species that they want to bring back to the island. Some of those may come back on their own. Others are going to need to go through a similar breeding and reintroduction process, but it's definitely a great step.

• 9:54Flora Lichtman?

  Hmm. Okay, we have, we have time for a couple more slow moving stories. What else you got?

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Well, I want to wish you a very happy sea turtle nesting season, Flora. Sea turtles come out of the ocean onto sandy beaches to build their nests. This is kind of temperature dependent, but in Florida, figure it's like March to October. And it turns out Delray Beach, Florida, has already reported the first beach nests of leatherback turtles. That's one of several species that are found in Florida waters.

• 10:23Flora Lichtman?

  How do we celebrate?

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, some of it seems pretty basic, right? If you're in a place where turtles nest, first be aware that weird shape on the beach might not be a leftover sandcastle. Obviously, don't disturb the nests. They need about two months to hatch. Don't disturb the turtles. But one thing that surprised me is limit the light pollution on the beaches because the nest laying, you know, it happens in the dark of night and extra light can mess up the turtle's behavior.

• 10:52Flora Lichtman?

  Hmm. Okay, um, I know you also have one more ancient turtle tale to tell.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Yes, this is a fun one. Fossil remnants of what may be an ancient sea turtle stampede.

• 11:05Flora Lichtman?

  The idea of a sea turtle stampede just really lights up my brain.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:11Flora Lichtman?

  What is that?

• 11:12Speaker 03

  This is research published last month in the journal Cretaceous Research. The story is-

• 11:17Flora Lichtman?

  Also a great, great journal.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Yes, one of my top reads.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  Back in 2019, a group of free climbers, sort of by chance, discovered a large number of these footprint traces, they thought, on a limestone slab in Italy on a mountainside near the city of Ancona. And they sent pictures of these to a scientist, who then returned to the area to study them. And you see what looks like a series of flipper marks all moving along together. Imagine, you know, you've got flippers, you're scooting along the ground. There are a bunch of these crescent shaped marks from your flippers just sort of, you know, shuffling along.

• 11:57Flora Lichtman?

  Like, how many, though? Like, are we talking about-

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Like hundreds, yes. Yeah. So you also see like ripple marks from moving water on the stone. And they tested the stone and they find fossil plankton in it so that they can get a rough date on.

• 12:12Flora Lichtman?

  What were they running from?

• 12:14Speaker 03

  Well, the thought is that there were a bunch of ancient sea turtles lazing along the oozy ocean floor. There's an earthquake. The turtles start a stampede to flee the area, leaving these flipper marks in the ooze. And then the mud gets covered by a layer of sediment by the earthquake and, you know, frozen in time. So fast forward some 80 million years, it's now a stone slab on the side of a mountain.

• 12:38Flora Lichtman?

  Beautiful. SciFry's chief turtle and tortoise correspondent, Charles Berkwurst. Thank you, Charles.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Thanks, Flora.

• 12:45Flora Lichtman?

  If you have a turtle tale, or really any science tale you want to share or question, give us a call. 877-4-SCIFRY is the number. And I'm going to say it again slowly. 877-4-SCIFRY. You know, like a turtle. We'll see you next time. I'm Flora Lixman.

• 13:14Speaker 00

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