Author: Sam Trail
Date: January 26, 2023
“How old are those turtles?” is a question FAU Marine Lab Coordinator, Emily Turla, hears often from our Visitor’s Gallery. However, this time of year, an influx of visitors has her noticing some new comments. One in particular: “These turtles look a lot bigger than my last visit!”
As we start 2023, it might be a new year, but they're the same turtles you probably saw on your last visit if you have come to see us over the last few months! This time of year, we are not bringing in new hatchlings, and the ones we have certainly don’t look the same as they did on Day 1. Our turtles in the lab now range from two to four months old, and they are growing quickly! Even our youngest turtles already weigh four times as much as they did on the day they hatched out on Boca Raton beaches, right across the street from our lab. To put that in perspective, most of our hard-shelled turtles come in weighing around 16 – 20 grams, which is about the equivalent of 4 – 5 sugar packets. And now, our tiniest turtles already weigh about as much as 5 AA batteries.
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Here you can see a side-by-side image of a turtle on its first day in the lab and on its last day before release just this past week! The length of their shell on their first day in the lab was just over 5 cm (a little longer than your typical matchstick), and upon release a few months later, that shell was closer to the size of a popsicle stick! As our turtles continue to grow, we will continue to release them once they have helped us answer our research questions about sex ratios and how they swim, just to name a few.
There will still be turtles to visit in our lab for a few more months before our tanks are empty and prepped for the next field season. We encourage you to come visit the FAU Marine Lab to see how much bigger our turtles have become since your last visit. Quite literally: “They grow up so fast!”
