Baby leatherback sea turtles can barely see in their journey to the ocean, and light pollution isn't helping. Discover more by clicking the link below.
"[Our paper] strengthens the argument that not only are all of these turtles having trouble with [light pollution], but [leatherbacks] may be even more susceptible," says Trail., only between one in 1,000 and one in 10,000 sea turtles survive to adulthood. Given these odds, you would think natural selection would shape sea turtle vision to help them best navigate towards the ocean. But Trail’s study found otherwise.
Circling puts turtles at risk for predators, and is also a waste of energy that is needed once they make it to the water. To understand why leatherbacks exhibit this behavior, Trail and her co-author, Michael Salmon, examined the visual perception of leatherbacks and loggerheads under different moon phases.
Leatherback eyes are less sensitive to all wavelengths of light than loggerheads, and during a dark night, they can’t tell where the horizon is. This result surprised Trail. "They’re deep divers and we think they’re foraging at those depths," says Trail. But instead, "across all wavelengths, even those that they’re most sensitive to, [leatherbacks] appear to be around 10 to 100 times less sensitive than their hard-shelled relatives."
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