A Sweetheart of a Turtle

A story by Scott Benson.

Leatherback sea turtle

Who knew that loggerhead turtles had different personalities? Well, Scott, NOAA Marine Turtle Specialist, made that discovery. Here he shares his experience capturing a 1300 lb specimen with his second string crew. She surprised them all, and made some friends that day.

SCOTT BENSON currently works in the Marine Turtle Ecology and Assessment Program at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, which is part of NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration). He is the lead researcher or Principal Investigator for leatherback turtle research. Scott is based in the Monterey Bay region because this area is a well-documented foraging ground for leatherback turtles. They migrate across the entire Pacific Ocean from Indonesia and come here to consume jellyfish. So the turtles are seasonal constituents of the local ecosystem, though Scott is based here year round.

Scott was born in St. Louis, Missouri and moved to Southern California with his family when he was five. He grew up in southern Orange County (Laguna Niguel/Dana Point), back in the day when Interstate 5 was under construction and the coast road was the only route to San Diego.  Dana Point was a truly small town then, smaller than today’s Moss Landing, where Scott’s office is located.

Scott came to Monterey Bay in 1994 to do graduate work in marine science at Moss Landing Marine Labs.  Prior to that he worked for NOAA for ten years. He spent 4 – 6 months every year at sea counting whales, dolphins, sea birds and sea turtles as an Identification Specialist. In that capacity, he was sent around the world identifying marine species from on board ships, most of the time in the eastern tropical Pacific between Hawaii and mainland USA, and Latin and South America. But Scott was also sent to the Atlantic Ocean, South Indian Ocean, and other locales. During that period he spent a lot of time at sea. Some field surveys went on for four and a half months, before they returned home again.

Scott usually worked for six months of the year doing survey work. He was also a beach lifeguard for the state of California. Scott reminisced that each time he came back from his adventures at sea, he had time on his hands and a pocket full of money, a rarity to have both at the same time!  As a result, he spent his time-off traveling the world – Asia, Himalayas, South America. Scott explained to people he was front-loading his retirement.

You can watch Scott’s story on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVtTJxQTfzc&t=17s

A SWEETHEART OF A TURTLE

Memorable wildlife encounters, well, I’ve had a few of them. I’m on the whale disentanglement team here. And I’ve done lots of work out here with marine birds and mammals. I did that for my thesis work in Moss Landing.

But, you know, with the leatherbacks, which is what I do primarily now, I mean, I’ve sampled lots of different turtles, and it turns out that, believe it or not, a reptile like that can have a personality. Yes, it turns out that they do. Some of them are pretty easy to work with, and others put up quite a fight.

They all have different kinds of attitudes. I wouldn’t have believed it at first if you told me that, but now that I’ve seen enough of them and interacted with enough of them, I totally believe that.

One time we had this very large turtle (607 kg, or over 1300 lbs.) that we were trying to capture for sampling. And I looked over the side, and I saw how big it was – and I’m using a hoop to catch these turtles. So we’re not tranquilizing anything, but we’ve got to put a hoop net on ‘em and then bring them onboard the boat.

I can say some of them can put up some resistance. And I saw this animal and thought, “Oh goodness,” and I looked behind me and I saw the crew that I had. I didn’t have my regular crew. I had a bunch of substitute folks. And gosh, I think, maybe this is not the right group for this one. But even though the turtle looked really huge, I really wanted to try to sample this one.

So we went for it. We captured and sampled this animal, and she was just a sweetheart. I mean, she was so calm and patient, and beautiful! A large animal without any scrapes on her – she was just a magnificent animal.

And we put her back in the water and she went to swim away. It’s the only time this has ever happened to us. She got in the water, and she did two big, powerful strokes. And these are animals that have these long flippers and are very powerful. True swimming machines are what these animals are. They can lift you off the boat with their flipper, and, you know, understandably so, they’re swimming all the way across the Pacific Ocean to get here.

Anyway, she did two big flaps with her flippers then put ‘em out straight, and then turned, did a power glide. She then essentially moved off, exited the boat going that direction then got in this power glide and turned around and did a swim by our boat. I could see the whole thing underwater. It was the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen. The power and magnificence of this animal swimming past us like that. Without, you know, really doing anything startling. It was just two strokes and then this power glide turn going past the boat. It was unbelievable!