Sea turtles don swimsuits for science

Dreamed up by a team of researchers at the University of Queensland’s School of Biological Sciences, the swimsuits were devised to collect sea turtle feces as a way to study their diet in the wild.

You’ve probably never thought about it, but collecting sea turtle poop in brisk ocean currents is ridiculously hard.

Coffee, who is being assisted in his project by University of Queensland researcher Carmen da Silva, said his plan ran into a snag when he realized how hard it was to retrieve the samples from the turtle tank at the Moreton Bay Research Station.

Loggerheads considerably belong to endangered species, but untended fishing gear and netting has been set responsible for the deaths of many turtles. At first, he tried outfitting the turtles’ tails with a flexible, turd-catching funnel, but the disgruntled reptiles were quick to kick those off.

The suits act as a harness to hold a “giant nappy” in place so it captures samples before they hit the water and disperse. He added that but it was also not a solution because of animal’ huge size, due to which they found difficulty in keeping the devices in place. This is when they came up with an innovative solution of using soft, flexible harnesses that are made out of swimsuit material and fitted snugly over the turtle’s shell.

Drawing inspiration from his colleagues, The University of Queensland student Owen Coffee fashioned one-piece suits from second-hand sunshirts he bought from his local op-shop for six loggerhead turtles.

“After a few modifications, including Velcro-attachments for the “nappy”, we had the ideal solution to our unusual problem”, education co-ordinator Dr Kathy Townsend said.

‘To our great surprise, it worked perfectly. With the help of them, scientists were able to collect “entire faecal samples” from the loggerhead sea turtles.

After the samples were collected, the world’s best-dressed sea turtles had their swimsuits removed and were returned to Moreton Bay; leaving behind important scientific samples that will be used to further protect their species.