Tiny turtles tracked on swimming frenzy

23 October 2014 Last updated at 18:26

By Jonathan Amos

Science correspondent, BBC News

Tiny tags have been used to follow the frenetic first hours in a loggerhead turtle's life.

When these reptiles emerge from their beach nests, they race down to the sea and start swimming hell for leather.

Their intention is to get as far off shore as possible, away from coastal predators and into currents that will sweep them out into the open ocean.

Now, scientists have documented this mad dash with the aid of little pingers stuck to the turtles' undersides.

These acoustic tags, just 12mm long, enabled Dr Rebecca Scott and colleagues to track the animals' progress through the water.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team describes the baby turtles' swimming behaviour, and the dispersal strategies that seem specific to different loggerhead populations.

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Minke whales responsible for mysterious duck sound

Thanks to acoustic tags a unique rhythmic sound, recorded for decades in the Southern Ocean, has now been identified as belonging to the Antarctic minke whale ((Balaenoptera bonaerensis). Called the “bio-duck,” the sound had mystified scientists for decades after it was first described and named by submarine personnel in the 1960s, who thought it sounded like a duck.

It is heard mainly during the austral winter in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica and off Australia’s west coast, which was particularly surprising as no one knew the minke whales were there. Therefore this identification of the Antarctic minke whale as the source of the sound now indicates that some minke whales stay in ice-covered Antarctic waters year-round, while others undertake seasonal migrations to lower latitudes.

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