Slow Breaking News: A Giant Tortoise Revival

FLORA 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 SciFri chief turtle and tortoise correspondent, Charles Bergquist. Welcome.

CHARLES BERQUIST: Hey, Flora.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You have been on the glacial turtle tortle beat at SciFri for over a decade, I understand.

CHARLES BERQUIST: Yeah, I mean, this started in 2012 when Lonesome George, the famous Galapagos tortoise, died. He had been kind of a conservation icon as the last of a line. 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 Keogh from the Galapagos.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Amazing.

CHARLES BERQUIST: I should note a follow-up on that. In 2020, some genetics analysis led researchers to believe that George’s line may not be completely lost. So that’s good news.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Oh, I love that– good news already. Before we get going, please tell me the difference between a turtle and a tortoise.

CHARLES BERQUIST: 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.

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

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

PENNY BECKER: The tortoises were directly utilized by the settlers and by all the sailors. I’ve heard they were eaten as food sources. The stories I’ve heard, they were used as ballast for ships. Like live tortoises were utilized in that way.

CHARLES BERQUIST: They couldn’t find a rock.

PENNY BECKER: I know. [LAUGHS] 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.

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

PENNY BECKER: 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 preserved 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 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 genetic analyzes 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 Floreana tortoises that were pretty purebred on this other island that were then brought into captivity 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.

FLORA 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?

CHARLES BERQUIST: Yeah, so they ended up over the course of several years with about 20 individual animals involved in this breeding effort. And from those, they’ve raised 158 young tortoises. They raised them to between 8 and 13 years old. So to give a picture, that’s like about 18 inches in size, a 30 to 50-pound chunk of turtle. But she said that they’re basically– these are pre-teens in turtle years. They’re not going to be mature enough to breed until 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s great. It’s like they’re going to college or something. You know what I mean? Wild times– a bunch of pre-teens released on an island by themselves. It sounds like a reality show.

CHARLES BERQUIST: Yeah, I mean, she described them as finding their way on Floreana Island. And she said that once upon a time, there were probably thousands of tortoises on this island. So they plan 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 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.

PENNY BECKER: Sometimes when you see these releases of different animals, they are a bit hesitant to get out of the box or to see themselves in that environment. That was not the case with the tortoises. From the moment they were able to be released 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 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s like the slow-motion version of the Panther Leap, Charles.

CHARLES BERQUIST: Yeah, exactly. Nobody’s going to get knocked over by a tortoise leaping out of the cage.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What was that moment like for Penny Becker?

CHARLES BERQUIST: I asked her about that exact thing.

PENNY BECKER: 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 going to share their home. It was such an emotional, joyful, amazing experience.

We’re lucky at Island Conservation because we get to see the promise, especially of what’s possible on an island. 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 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. I remember talking to Veronica, the leader of the Floreana community, and she said, I can’t believe we’ve gotten to this place after so many years.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’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.

CHARLES BERQUIST: Yeah, I mean, she stressed that this tortoise reintroduction process is part of a larger context. 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Mmm. We have time for a couple more slow-moving stories. What else you got?

CHARLES BERQUIST: 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How do we celebrate?

CHARLES BERQUIST: Well, I mean, some of it seems pretty basic. 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– it happens in the dark of night, and extra light can mess up the turtles’ behavior.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Mmm. I know you also have one more ancient turtle tale to tell.

CHARLES BERQUIST: Yes, this is a fun one– fossil remnants of what may be an ancient sea turtle stampede.

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

CHARLES BERQUIST: Yeah. This is research published last month in the journal Cretaceous Research. The story is–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Also great journal.

CHARLES BERQUIST: Yes, one of my top reads. 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’ve got flippers. You’re scooting along the ground. There are a bunch of these crescent-shaped marks from your flippers just sort of shuffling along.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How many, though? Are we talking like hundreds?

CHARLES BERQUIST: Like hundreds, yes.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Oh my God.

CHARLES BERQUIST: Yeah. So you also see 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What were they running from?

CHARLES BERQUIST: 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 frozen in time. So fast-forward some 80 million years– it’s now a stone slab on the side of a mountain.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Beautiful. SciFri’s chief turtle and tortoise correspondent Charles Berquist. Thank you, Charles.

CHARLES BERQUIST: Thanks, Flora.

FLORA LICHTMAN: If you have a turtle tale or really any science tale you want to share or a question, give us a call. 877-4-SCIFRI is the number. And I’m going to say it again slowly– 877-4-SCIFRI– you know, like a turtle. We’ll see you next time. I’m Flora Lichtman.

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