Word on the Reef
Inspiring interviews with marine conservation legends.
Word on the Reef
S3 E12: Mud, Blood and Sea Turtles: Caitlin's Quest to Give Turtles a Future
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In 2022, a mass stranding of more than 600 sick turtles devastated Hervey Bay in South East Queensland. As volunteers worked tirelessly to rescue them, scientists got to work on solving the puzzle: what caused this disaster?
Dr Caitlin Smith is one of the scientists racing to unravel the threats facing our sea turtles before it’s too late.
Her work has seen her fearlessly leaning out of helicopters to survey seagrass, slip-sliding across stinky mud bogs to rescue half-ton turtles, studying turtle blood samples, and putting baby turtles through fitness tests to understand how our actions are impacting them.
In this episode, she explains why these ancient animals are so magnetic, and what we need to do to save them.
More info:
- Assessing the impacts of contaminant exposure on green sea turtles - Dr Caitlin Smith, UniSC
- Post-flood monitoring of seagrass in Hervey Bay and Great Sandy Strait - JCU Tropwater
- Dugongs and turtles are starving to death in Queensland's seas - and La Nina's floods are to blame - Professor Kathy Townsend, The Conversation.
- Mon Repos Turtle Centre
- UniSC Milbi Centre: Sea Turtle Research and Conservation
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- Rising Ti...
Sir David’s Bday, Summer Snapshot and intro to Sea Turtles
SPEAKER_03Hi Ocean lovers, just a quick note before we dive in. The episode you're about to hear was recorded on the 8th of May. We're still producing weekly shows on CansFM, but I've recently taken on more hours at work, so keeping up with the podcast editing has been a little hectic lately. Thanks so much for your patience while I catch up on uploads. The good news is we're still absolutely committed to bringing you the world's greatest marine science adventures. If you'd like to help keep the podcasts sustainable, one of the best ways is to become a Patreon supporter at patreon.com slash word on the reef podcast. And a super easy way to support the show for free is to hit follow on your podcast app and share the podcast with a friend who you think might enjoy it too. A big fishy thank you to our wonderful Patreon supporters, Maverick in Canada, Nina in Belgium, Emily in the USA, and our Australian supporters Reese, Gemma, Rodney, Alyssa, Sally, and Ari. Thank you so much for helping to keep us swimming along. Now, let's dive into today's episode. You're listening to Word on the Reef, diving into marine science on the Great Barrier Reef and beyond with Tanya Murphy and Brett Goodban. Good morning and welcome to Word on the Reef. I'm your host, diver, and marine conservationist, Tanya Murphy. And with me, as always, is Cans Aquarium's marine educator and fish whisperer, Brett Goodban.
SPEAKER_02Good morning, Tanya. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to another big show. Today's going to be a cracker.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and today's a really exciting special day.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yep.
SPEAKER_03It's the 100th birthday of one of the most beloved conservationists in the world, Sir David.
SPEAKER_02Happy birthday, Sir David, from all the animals, every creature, land and sea. Very special day.
SPEAKER_03I hope everyone out there is celebrating by having some sort of cake.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's National Sir David Attenborough Cake Day. So get into it.
SPEAKER_03I feel like it should be like a global public holiday.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it absolutely. Let's go for it. Okay, that's a big thing for us. We're gonna do that.
SPEAKER_03It's a public holiday for all the animals. They get a break.
SPEAKER_02That's right, everyone spends the day in nature. It says good day to an animal for Sir David. Yeah. Sounds good to me.
SPEAKER_03Now, before we dive further into today's topic, just a quick reef news update. On Tuesday, the Great Barry Reef Marine Park Authority released its annual summer snapshot report, which provides an overview of conditions across the Great Barry Reef over the summer months and how those conditions have affected reef health. Unfortunately, the report shows there's been no real reprieve for the reef this summer, with multiple cumulative pressures, including prolonged marine heat exposure, two tropical cyclones, and a tropical low flooding and outbreaks of coral-eating crown of thorn starfish. The prolonged heat triggered a regional coral bleaching event in the northern region, which is the Cairns region, along with localized bleaching in the far northern, central, and southern regions of the reef, all while many reefs are still recovering from the back-to-back mass bleaching events of 2024 and 2025. Scientists are warning there's also a high risk of severe bleaching again next summer if a strong El Nino develops, which could be deeply concerning given many coral communities are still recovering from years of cumulative stress. It really highlights how important it is for governments to take stronger action on climate change and water pollution while there's still time. Now, with all that said, it's also important to emphasize, as we always do, that I still go diving on the reef at every opportunity I get. The Great Barry Reef is enormous, bigger than New Zealand, and different regions are affected differently by stress events. So it remains one of the most extraordinary ecosystems on the planet.
SPEAKER_02Yep, she's very special. So get out in there and see it.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely still worth visiting. But if we want to keep it that way, we need to step up and protect it while we can. Now, another animal besides coral that is battling the impact of both climate change and water pollution is the sea turtle. Sea turtles have existed in our oceans for more than 230 million years, dating back to the Triassic period when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Of the world's seven marine turtle species, six are found on the Great Barrier Reef.
SPEAKER_02Yep, how lucky are we?
SPEAKER_03So lucky. The species we most commonly encounter here are green sea turtles, which can live for up to 100 years, grow more than four feet long, and they can navigate thousands of kilometres across the ocean using minerals in their heads to detect the Earth's magnetic field.
SPEAKER_02Oh, they're pretty fancy.
SPEAKER_03They're like X-Men.
SPEAKER_02They have Google maps.
SPEAKER_03If that's not a superpower, I don't know what it is. So they surface every few minutes for air when active, but can sleep underwater for several hours at a time. Can you imagine being able to do that? That would be so relaxing.
SPEAKER_02It's probably not a good thing to do though.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, don't forget to breathe.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03In the past, sea turtles were heavily exploited for the turtle soup trade and were also killed as bycatch in trawl fisheries. Today, while protections have helped some populations recover, turtles still face growing threats from climate change, water pollution, habitat loss, and marine debris. So, what can we do to ensure the future of our sea turtles? Well, scientists are working on some innovative solutions.
Intro to Dr Caitlin Smith
SPEAKER_03Joining us in the studio this morning is someone who has spent more than a decade working with sea turtles, James Cook University marine ecologist Dr. Caitlin Smith. Good morning, Dr. Smith, and welcome to Wet on the Reef. Oh, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're really excited for this one. Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_03Are you excited for Sir David's birthday as well? Oh my god, I'm I'm so glad he made it to 100. I was just playing every day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_03So, yeah, it's great to have you on the show. Now, before we dive into protecting sea turtles, can you please tell us a bit about yourself, your background, and how you came to be so passionate about the marine world?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, oh so I've only recently moved to Cairns uh about two years ago to be a postdoctoral research fellow at James Cook University. But I guess it's a kind of a funny story of how I fell into marine science because it's not something that I ever really grew up wanting to be a marine biologist. I was at uni studying a Bachelor of Science, and at the time I was really into physics, and then I I don't know, after a year or two of doing that, I was like, oh, maybe I'll change my major. And I just looked at the list and I was like, marine science sounds kind of cool, and just switched.
SPEAKER_03You just like point pointed randomly at the page and landed on marine biology.
SPEAKER_00Basically, and my mum was like, What are you doing? And yeah, it it really changed the trajectory of my life, and I'm really, really pleased that I did that as well. So the turtle gods were guiding your hand.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, mother turtle. Speaking of the turtle gods, uh, what do you think about the theory that the earth is on the back of a giant turtle that's flying through space?
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's 100%. Possibly no, that's happening.
SPEAKER_03I feel like I'm flying on the back of a turtle every day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Did I also read that you were born in the Philippines? Yeah, I was actually.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I didn't see that coming. Okay.
SPEAKER_03That's an amazing place for coral reefs and stuff. Did you get to experience it?
SPEAKER_00No, unfortunately. So I was born in Manila and we moved back to Australia when I was three. But I did technically go to some of the islands like Boracai and things like that. I just don't have the memory. But I'm actually in the process of booking a holiday to the Philippines to go back and yeah, go to Cebu and Palawan and all those awesome places that you have.
SPEAKER_03Maybe you'll unlock some buried memories of seeing turtles when you were younger than three that you've just forgotten.
SPEAKER_00Maybe that maybe that was the reason why I became a remote.
SPEAKER_02Yes, your inner turtle went picked that. Yes, we need you.
SPEAKER_03So now you've spent over a decade working with sea turtles, what have been some of your favourite moments or memories from your interactions with sea turtles?
SPEAKER_00Oh. I guess my first interaction with a sea turtle was with Dr. Columbus, who is a very prolific sea turtle researcher. He was a researcher for the Queensland government for many, many decades. And yeah, my first adult memory of seeing a sea turtle is with him on the beaches of Monopo where a uh nesting female loggerhead was coming up to lay your eggs. I was just like absolutely entranced from that point. Yeah.
Are Sea Turtles Intelligent?
SPEAKER_00Are turtles intelligent? It's a great question. I feel like maybe Brett's better to answer this question.
SPEAKER_02I'm not sitting here itching going, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, definitely. People have probably heard me say this on the show before, but we had the Cannes Turtle Rehab Center at the aquarium, and I've had the honour of working alongside Jenny Gilbert for a very, very long time, a couple of decades. Anywho, we do the tours in there and we have turtles in there, and uh you do create that very special bond with them. I swear they're intelligent. They're just incredible. We got Big Tommy in there at the moment, he's just awesome. And they they do remember us, and the interesting thing about it is when we bring a sick turtle in and they can't see each other, the turtles that are already in there will move up to the side of the tank and look in the direction of where that sick turtle is, where they can they can feel that presence of another turtle in there, and then their their whole attitude changes. It's incredible to watch.
SPEAKER_03Wow, so turtles can sense each other's presence even when they can't see each other.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_03Magical. I told you they're X-Men.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03They're magical powers, so they've they've got different personalities, right?
SPEAKER_02Because you say Tommy's very uh Tommy's uh he's like a teenager with too many red lollies.
SPEAKER_03Oh well, no wonder he gets along with you.
SPEAKER_02Oh, he loves me. And uh Libby we had in there, she was a little bit more sedate, but then we had Carlotta, the big loggerhead, she'd been through a lot. She had to have amputation of flippers and from fishing net, etc. So you need a thick skin to work with these animals because you see that humans have a long way to go. But we just do what we can, send them back out in the big blue with crush and squirt and move on to the next one.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you you were just telling a story that you if you stand near the tank, Tommy will come over and breathe on you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, nudge you. Yeah, he's like, excuse me, I'm down here, why aren't you looking at me?
SPEAKER_00Is it mostly because he wants some food?
SPEAKER_02There's there's got something to do with that. He loves his food. Yes.
SPEAKER_03They're like puppy dogs.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they're just beautiful. But but you know, we've also got to remember to everyone out there if you go out to the reef, they might get a little bit close to you, but that's not them saying to you, hey, touch me or or follow me, etc. You've got to keep your safe distance from them at all times because they're all protected.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's illegal to touch a turtle, isn't it? Because they're protected.
SPEAKER_02They're all protected.
SPEAKER_03So have seen people get slapped with fines for touching a turtle and for posting it on social media.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_03So uh Dr. Smith, do you have any stories to add about the personalities of turtles and why they're so lovable?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I might have a different opinion to you, Brett. Whereas I know from a science standpoint, turtles have a very low brain to body mass ratio, but just because they're technically not on like that smarter side of the scale, like dolphins or anything like that, doesn't mean that they're not capable of awesome things, like you say, like traveling thousands of miles for migration and coming up to nest once every two weeks for months at a time and not eating for six months to complete those nesting processes. Yeah, so I have seen turtles kind of like wedge themselves in the sand after like falling off a small little sand cliff and not being able to move and you know, but then spending the next half hour trying to like dig their head out of the sand, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03They need to have a right side up little sticker on them.
SPEAKER_02If you feel like In case of emergency, please flip over.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, which is what scientists are having to do with some of them, of course. They used to be, I suppose, so numerous that if they were not able to write themselves, it wasn't an issue. But nowadays they're under so many threats that there are rangers helping to flip them if they get stuck and things like that. Because we really need to help every last turtle that we can now, especially the big breeding ones. So varying levels of intelligence, but they're
Why are Sea Turtles Important - and a Leatherback Encounter
SPEAKER_03really important, aren't they? Why are sea turtles important?
SPEAKER_00Sea turtles are we use them as an environmental proxy, so if there's no sea turtles, there's something wrong with your ecosystem, so that's really important. They're also a really charismatic species, so they're a great icon for the reef, and they're incredibly important to the ecosystem and to generating a sense of community around the reef as well. They're really great for that.
SPEAKER_03They're like a mascot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_03And and they are, like you said, one of the canaries in the coal mine when the turtles are struggling. All the problems that are affecting turtles are a reflection on what is happening to the ocean in general. So they're a really good awareness raiser for people because so many people love turtles. And yeah, I remember the first time I came across a sea turtle when I was diving, and it was an unforgettable moment. I mean, I must have seen hundreds, maybe thousands of turtles since then, but I still remember the first time I came across one while I was swimming in the ocean and it just felt like like it wasn't real. I felt like I was in the Triassic period. Yeah. You're just in your everyday life walking around in the city. You just don't come across experiences like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I yeah, I can remember my first time too. And I also remember the first time I ever saw a leatherback off the back of Osprey, and I I thought it was maybe a giant shark because I saw this mass in the background. I didn't know a lot about turtles back then, and I thought I was having an out-of-body experience. I'm like, is that that can't be a turtle? This thing was massive. That's so majestic.
SPEAKER_03I've just googled leatherback maximum size, reaching six to seven feet in length. So that's longer than you.
SPEAKER_02And nearly a ton.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, think think a mini cooper.
SPEAKER_02Yep, it's basically a mini. It's the second largest reptile on the planet. They're massive.
SPEAKER_03Jeepers. That's a big old reptile.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_03They must they must eat a lot of jellies. Yeah, they're jellyfish exclusive. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Do you know what? That always cracks me up every time I talk to my customers about that. Where are they finding all these jellyfish to sustain a body that big?
SPEAKER_00But they must have these serious jellyfish GPS system because they're really deep divers, leatherbacks, so they go like a a couple of kilometres below the surface.
SPEAKER_02Isn't that because uh their carapace is leathery at slightly slightly different tailored to allow for that compression at that depth?
SPEAKER_00So the other the other six species of turtles are are hard-shelled turtles and and leatherbacks are the only soft-shelled marine turtle.
SPEAKER_02Wow. I never knew that. So interesting. They can dive pretty deep. Is that where all the sea jellies are living?
SPEAKER_00They must be.
SPEAKER_02Oh, how much does a leatherback have to eat? I'm getting all the questions out to you now because I I get these at work and I'm like, oh a lot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm also I'm not a huge expert on leatherback sea to never seen one and that's like on my bucket list for sure. Yeah. But yeah, I'm not sure how many jellies a leatherback has to consume.
SPEAKER_03I've just Googled.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah?
SPEAKER_03Oh, if we trust Google, they eat roughly 73% of their body weight in jellyfish per day.
SPEAKER_02Oh, where are they finding those? Aldi. A literal ton of jellyfish. Do you know the adaptation with those backward-facing keratin barbs inside their throat to allow them to be able to eject that excess water out, but not not so they're all these little barbs that face backwards. You try eating a sausage roll underwater without swallowing water. So the amount of sea jellies that they eat, as they swallow it, they compress it and that helps eject that excess water out. So they've got like a garbage container. Yeah, it's like a backwards-facing barbs, but then that leads me to obviously the plastic bag issue, because if it looks like a jellyfish and swims like one and tastes like one, it's a plastic bag. And they're technically not biologically set up to get rid of the plastic bag because they think it's a sea jelly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that's why they get so many entrapped in their stomach.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's terribly sad.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'll find you a photo of one, but it's it's a horror movie.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, they're adorable until you look down their mouth apparently.
SPEAKER_02It's just yeah, it's scary.
SPEAKER_03Don't want to do turtle dentistry.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's the last thing a sea jelly sees. So no wonder they're so stressed.
SPEAKER_03It's true, it's true. Jellyfish do actually have eyes, some of them, so they would be seeing that terrifying sight. Alright, so let's talk about ecotoxicology, a new word for all the listeners because we haven't talked about that before.
SPEAKER_02It's a big
Poisoned Blood: Turtle Ecotoxicology
SPEAKER_02one.
SPEAKER_03Dr. Smith, I understand that for your PhD, you took blood samples from turtles and found some pretty nasty contaminants in their blood. So for any listeners who aren't familiar to start off with, what is ecotoxicology?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a great question. So I guess the simplest way of explaining ecotoxicology is really contaminants. And when I say contaminants, I mean a mixture of trace elements, so those are your heavy metals and that kind of thing, and also organic contaminants as well. So they can be like your chemicals, like herbicides and pesticides, and how they impact the ecosystem. And this could be your kind of abiotic factors like water, or it could be your biotic factors, so the accumulation of those contaminants in your sea turtles or your seagrass and and how that impacts the ecosystem as a whole.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean, anything that ends up in the seagrass is going to end up in the turtle, I suppose. And the dewong, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So coccidiosis is something that the green sea turtles suffer from, the brain parasite that horses get as well. And they trialed the we had Waza in there a few years ago, and he was suffering from cocsidiosis, and they gave him the same treatment that we give horses to get rid of cocidiosis, and it worked.
SPEAKER_03Well, hey, I feel like this is obviously a tangent because we're talking about a viral or bacterial infection. A par parasite, yeah. Okay, so do you want to comment on that? It's a separate topic that we're talking about.
SPEAKER_02Have I just branched off onto just just turn my microphone off, all right? And I'll sit in the corner of my main.
SPEAKER_00We were talking about ecotoxicology and then you moved it to parasites.
SPEAKER_02Leave me and my parasites alone. All right.
SPEAKER_00It's also a very interesting topic as well. Yeah. Parasites are ubiquitous. Like when I was studying in my undergrad, I didn't eat seafood for about 10 years after doing a parasitology course because we just got some prawns from the market and the lecturer was like, All right, find some parasites here. And I was like, Oh, that's gonna be really hard. No, they're everywhere. And it doesn't necessarily mean that that's a bad thing, like it's just means that they're that they're everywhere, you know.
SPEAKER_03A warning to the listeners, listening to this might make you want to stop eating seafood, which is okay with us.
SPEAKER_02Subliminally, that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so so literally just prawns from the seafood section full of parasites when you study them under a microscope or what have you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Pretty much.
SPEAKER_03And and so not all of those are harmful to humans, though.
SPEAKER_00No, they'll just pass through your system. But in terms of parasites and sea turtles, also ubiquitous as well. So very, very common. But one of the most common ones are spirochid flukes, so blood flukes, and they cause a lot of clotting in the blood. And and sometimes when you know we do an acropsy, which is like a uh an animal autopsy, we find a lot of the flukes in the heart and also in the brain as well, and they cause clots, and that could be a sign of mortality for that turtle.
SPEAKER_03So back to ecotoxicology, you explained what that was. And so tell us about your study for researching the sea turtles' contaminant exposure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I loved my PhD, it was so great. I got to spend so much time on the Southern Great Bayer Reef. So a couple of my sites were Lady Elliott Island and Heron Island. I've probably been to Heron Island about like 25 times now. I'm so jealous. So I've been once, but yeah, do recommend. It's awesome. I love it so much. Oh, I highly recommend anyone that has the capability to go there to go there.
SPEAKER_03It's a very turtly place, so it makes sense. They're nesting there, they're breeding there. I saw them. That's the only place I've ever seen them mating is at Heron Island. So they're very it's a definite gathering.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they just come right up on the beach mating. Yeah, it's awesome.
SPEAKER_03Oh, right, eh? It's a bit of a show. Come on, guys, this is a family resort.
SPEAKER_02Goodness me. Love island. Love island for turtles. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and so yeah, you got these two beautiful reefs on the Southern Great Barrier Reef. And then I also had one of my study sites was Harvey Bay, which is a a mud flat, which is a very different setting to be working in. But nonetheless, the turtles there are beautiful too.
SPEAKER_03So, what contaminants did you find in the sea turtles?
SPEAKER_00So, like I said, when we look at contaminants, we're looking at trace elements, so heavy metals and that kind of thing. And then we're also looking at organic contaminants as well. And something that was really interesting is we thought that Harvey Bay was gonna have, you know, a lot of the trace elements and organic contaminants as well, a lot higher than what we thought were gonna be our pristine sites for the Southern Great Barrow Reef. But just before I started sampling, we had that massive flood event in 2021 or like late 2021-2022. And so we actually found not a lot of organic contaminants in the Harvey Bay area, and a lot more in at Heron Island and Lady Elliott Island, but uh a lot of trace elements and heavy metals in that Harvey Bay population. So things like cobalt and molybdenum were quite high, and we actually see this is quite common in a lot of the inshore populations on the east coast. So Gladstone also has really high cobalt as well, and so it might be like a naturally occurring element there that's just found in really high traces. So our sea turtle populations are quite used to being exposed to that level there as well.
SPEAKER_03Uh so it could be natural, but what are the sources do you think of the contaminants and how are they getting into the turtle's bloodstream?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so particularly for our trace elements, they're usually they're like forever, you know. So you find them a lot in sediment, and so they're most likely released in these flood events where you get that sudden influx of water from the land environment and pushes out that that sediment and then kind of releases that trace element as well. Okay. And then, you know, that's going out onto your seagrass beds. And when turtles eat seagrass, they inadvertently pick up the sediment as well because they're trying to get that root out too.
SPEAKER_03So yeah. So trace elements are naturally occurring, but floods could be increasing the amount that's running off and getting absorbed into the ocean. But did you look at what sort of pollutants from human industry or agriculture or housing? Use was getting into the turtles' bloodstreams because I I've read that our recreational drugs and various medications that humans take have been found in blood samples of turtles.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that would be Jason Vandermoe from Griffith, his research. And yeah, that was a study that was funded by WWF a few years ago on the reef. And they did what's called a non-targeted screening, which is very, very expensive. And as a PhD student, I could not afford to do that. And so they screened for thousands of different contaminants and chemicals, and they were able to pick those up in small quantities, but nonetheless they were present in the blood, which is quite concerning.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00But I guess for my PhD, I used a method that I think it's so cool. So what we do is we take a tissue sample from a sea turtle and we grow that in the lab. So then we can have live turtle cells in the lab that we can expose to different contaminants. And then we look to see how those cells respond to that. And for mine, I was looking at cell death. So how many cells die as a result of being exposed to the contaminant mixture? And so I was looking at organic contaminants as a whole. And so how we do that is I take a blood sample from a live turtle out there living its life. And then I take it back to the lab and I extract all the organic contaminants out of that, and it's just one single mixture. So we're looking at it holistically. And then I expose the turtle cells that I've grown in the lab to that mixture. And then we can see how toxic that turtle's blood was. Okay.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome. Now I understand how the turtles ended up as X-Men with superpowers because you're experimenting on them in the lab.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and living in sewers.
SPEAKER_03I'm just joking, of course, because you're not experimenting on full-grown live turtles, just to be clear. We're talking about some tissue samples. That is really interesting. And so it makes me think about, you know, if turtles are consuming these contaminants in the inshore environments, what might this say for the seafood species that we're eating, once again, which probably don't just have parasites in them, but but that they might also have the the cobalt and the things that you mentioned. Do you think that I mean it's not what your study was about, but do you think that humans might be being affected by these marine contaminants?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it's always good to err on the side of caution, particularly when you're eating fish, or like really large species like tuna and stuff, they're a a really good uh accumulator of mercury and things like that. And so eating a tin of tuna every day's not gonna be the best choice for you. But yeah.
SPEAKER_02I just follow the greatest saying ever made from Bruce the Shark, fish your friend's not food, so I just don't eat seafood.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, in ancient times people would have been able to eat seafood safely and the populations were uh sustainable. But we've sort of done ourselves out of a food source by contaminating the ocean to some degree. I mean, you can still eat seafood, but the ocean is where all our pollutants, including microplastics, are ending up, unfortunately. And then and then we're eating it. So it's coming right back full circle to the city.
SPEAKER_00I guess we just haven't like the research is still ongoing and we still don't know the full impacts of contaminant accumulation and then how that comes back to us as humans as well. So I guess just watch that space.
Tackling a Mass Turtle Stranding
SPEAKER_03Dr. Smith, there's an article in the conversation from 2022 which describes you crawling across mud on a tyre in a tube to rescue a struggling sea turtle near Harvey Bay, which is just south of the Great Barrier Reef. So, for listeners who haven't seen that article, can you explain what was going on there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it was really sad. In 2022, particularly in Harvey Bay, there was a massive flood event and it ended up causing a mass stranding for the sea turtles in the area. And Harvey Bay is like a massive mud flat, so it's really hard to get out there, and you end up just sinking down to your waist in in mud, so it's actually better to chuck on a wetsuit and yeah, f float out on an inner tube to get out there and then. You figured out the technique. Well, that wasn't actually me. There's a man called Orb Stridum, and he's been working with the turtles there for a couple of decades, and he came up with that technique.
SPEAKER_03He developed the trademarked mud skipping technique.
SPEAKER_00I've never been so muddy in my life, it was like all through my hair, and it smells awful as well. And my wet my wetsuits never smelt the same as well.
SPEAKER_03I have accidentally stepped in mud before at the Cannes Esplanade and gone up to my knees and my flip-flops were gone forever. My thongs. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_03Uh that mud will not give anything back. So yeah, amazing that you're able to crawl out. And so you attached the turtle to the inner tube or another one, and then got pulled back by a rope.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I had a little harness on. Because I was like, I don't want to die here. Um pull me back. But yeah, so we attached ropes to the turtle as well, and so the turtle was pulled back in and then and the turtle first, and then me. Because we know what's important.
SPEAKER_03And this is probably a crocodile-inhabited area as well, right?
SPEAKER_00Um, not so much in Harvey Bay, like maybe the occasional one, but I wasn't uh yeah, I wasn't so stressed about it.
SPEAKER_02That's all you need. That's all you need is just the occasional one. It's okay. There's only one five-meter, three-ton crocodile there, but what are the chances? It's so Aussie, isn't it? You should be right.
SPEAKER_03I'm sure it was on the risk assessment. Dr. Smith was all over it.
SPEAKER_0290% chance.
SPEAKER_03So how many turtles were rescued during that time and why were they all stranded on the monthlets?
SPEAKER_00So there's an amazing group that works out of Harvey Bay called Turtles in Trouble Rescue. And I don't know the exact number, but it was over 600 call-outs that they got that year. Oh my god. Um, stranded sea turtles just in like the Harvey Bay region.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's obviously much higher than on a normal year.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I think it was up from like a hundred and something the year prior. So, yeah, more than five hundred turtles extra for them. So they really expanded their efforts from that. And they've got a great group of volunteers there now. And yeah, at the time we didn't really know what was causing the mass stranding and and kind of knew that it was probably from that massive flood event. And so that prompted the government to give uh a bunch of different entities, like the government and a couple of different universities some money to do a disease investigation on the area and see if it was contaminant-based or if it was seagrass or a p a parasite, something like that. Yeah, and so from there we we did a a full investigation.
SPEAKER_03So you did necropsi on the turtles that washed up, and what did you find out about why they got sick and stranded?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so at the same time, my colleagues at Tropwater JCU were doing the seagrass surveys as well, and they found that the seagrass beds in the area uh were less than 1% of what they were 20 years ago. And then we saw kind of this shift in diet from seagrass to mangrove leaves and macroalgae instead of their main diet source. And we really think that that was probably the main driver of the mass training event was mass starvation.
SPEAKER_03So sad. So these turtles were found with mangrove leaves inside them, which are not nutritious for turtles, but the reason the turtles were eating them is because all the seagrass had died, so they were starving. Couldn't the turtles migrate to get away from the flood impacts and find some seagrass somewhere else?
SPEAKER_00The short answer is no. So sea turtles, particularly green turtles, have quite high sight fidelity, so they have really restrictive home ranges.
SPEAKER_03Even though they can travel thousands of kilometres, they don't typically do that, right?
SPEAKER_02They never conserve their energy when they're once they find their little happy place in the world, they generally stay around that, right? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So they got their foraging area and they got their nesting area, and they have some flexibility in that, but not not a lot. It's quite different to Jugongs, right? Because we saw after this flood, yeah, a couple of Jugongs also stranded. But Jugons have the ability to migrate to other foraging areas. So we saw the Jugongs from Harpy Bay mostly migrate upwards to Gladstone area, but in that the Jugons aren't able to, you know, change what they eat, so they're exclusively seagrass. Whereas the sea turtles, they have this ability to diet shift, so they can shift from a mostly seagrass majority to algae and mangrove and kind of complement their diet that way. And that's what we saw. The adults typically aren't very good at diet shifting that quickly, and so that's why we saw a lot of the adult turtles really struggling with that seagrass decline, and then more of your juvenile and your subadults have a more wider composition.
SPEAKER_03They eat more jellyfish and things like that, though.
SPEAKER_00More jellies, um, a lot more algae as well.
SPEAKER_03So of that roughly 600 call-outs for stranded turtles, what proportion were they able to rehabilitate and save, and how many of them were lost?
SPEAKER_00I think maybe at least 200 or so were dead on arrival, and then a couple of hundred over that course of the year were transferred down to Australia Zoo, which is a really large distance to drive every day.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, how far is it from Harvey Bay to Australia Zoo?
SPEAKER_00About two and a half hours, I'd say.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I read that the volunteers were 600 times with 600 call-outs, were driving two and a half hours to take the turtles down to Brisbane and then two and a half hours back, and then getting another call out. So that's a big job for a bunch of volunteers.
SPEAKER_00It is, and uh it's really great because they've got their own rehab facility now in Harvey, basically. Oh, they do? Yeah, they do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, our guest last week, Professor Kathy Townsend, told us about it as well. So it's great. Yeah, I love Kathy, she was my PhD supervisor. Oh, yeah, we did a great chat. We're getting the whole fam on the show, one by one. So that flood in 2022 was off the back of also very wet previous seasons because of repeated La Nina conditions. So we know that climate change is making extreme weather events like floods worse. So safe to say that this increase, having 600 strandings, is a concern because of climate change. Do you know if the seagrass beds in that region have recovered or how long that will take to recover?
SPEAKER_00I think two subsequent years after that, my colleagues at JCU went back to look at the seagrass and they did see some recovery and also some shifting of seagrass to more deeper waters as well. So it is on the recovery, but the issue is it's still in that really vulnerable state as well. So if you have another flood come and wipe it out, it kind of undoes all of the great work that the seagrass have been doing. Yeah, because the last couple of years. Yeah, it's a bit more vulnerable.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. And what we learned from Professor Helene Marsh a couple of weeks ago was that the recovery rate varies because, for example, if you have a cyclone, it can just rip all of the seagrasses up by the roots and wash all the seeds away, then there's nothing left to regrow. Uh, if you have a flood, if it's just a small amount of mud that's dumped, the seagrass might be able to poke through and grow back. But if you have extreme amounts of sediment, then the seagrasses are just buried under meters of mud, which I think is what happened in this 2022 event, right? The mud was just so deep, it's very hard for the seagrass to come back. Yeah.
James Bond Seagrass Surveys
SPEAKER_03I hope the listeners of our show have gained an appreciation over all of our interviews that being a marine scientist is basically like being James Bond. One minute you're crawling across a crocodile-inhabited swamp to capture a sea turtle, and next minute you're hanging out of a helicopter, looking through your binoculars.
SPEAKER_02Flying drones, jumping on the back of stuff. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So Dr. Smith, do you get to hang out of helicopters looking for seagrass? And why are you doing that?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I do. It's my favorite part of my job. So we monitor and map seagrass across Northern Australia, and as you guys know, it's super croc infested and jellyfish and really remote and hard to get to. And so we find that using helicopters is the best way to reach a really large area in a short amount of time. And also it's just really cool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's that element of it. Sorry, you want me to what? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You want me to hang out the side of a helicopter? Oh, okay. I have got other things on, but they'll do it.
Turtle Egg Cooling Project
SPEAKER_03Dr. Smith, I watched a video about some of your research and it showed you at the beach with a watering can pouring water onto beach sand. Now, if there were any people strolling along the beach, I can only imagine they would have been pretty puzzled about your effort to bring more water to the beach. I mean, we already have rising sea levels and you're out here adding more water. Please explain yourself. Just joking. But seriously, what is that project all about?
SPEAKER_00Right. So I'll take it back. So sea titles have this thing called temperature-dependent sex determination, which means that the temperature of the sand that they exhalate in will dictate whether or not they are born male or female. And so we have this cool thing called hot chicks and cool dudes. So a hotter sand temperature creates females and a cooler sand temperature creates males. And in a warming climate, we're getting this feminization of our sea turtle populations. And not to say that that's everywhere, it's just in a select amount of places as well. And we also see that feminization or a female bias population is quite natural in a sea turtle population as well. So your 65-70% female population is quite normal. But in some areas we're seeing 99%.
SPEAKER_0399% female. Yeah. And I saw that this has been happening for two or three decades now. So Yeah, which is really concerning. I feel like we're so lucky because we have so many sea turtles on the Great Barry Reef. I mean, I went and worked as a dive instructor in Thailand for three months, and I think I saw one turtle in the entire three months, and everyone was losing their mind because it's so uncommon to see them there, which is sad. Which is sad because Kotao means turtle island. So they obviously used to have a lot of turtles and now they don't have many. But I digress. In Australia, in the Great Barry Reef, we're so lucky you can see multiple turtles every time you jump in the water. But most of them are female, which I can tell because the females have a much shorter tail. Yep. And as you're saying, up to 99% of the turtles there are female. And they live for a long time, they can live up to 100 years. So we're not yet seeing the impacts that are going to happen when these females eventually pass on and haven't had enough males to mate with, right? So it's it's a matter of time.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And so that's why it's really important to have, you know, management methods that can try and combat that. And that's where the turtle cooling project came in a few years ago, which was a WWF project. And basically, you know, a lot of our partners across Asia Pacific were like, how can we try and combat the impacts of feminization? And one of those ways is irrigation, so cooling sand temperatures by having water. And that's great for areas where nesting occurs, like Bundaberg or the Sunshine Coast, where you have access to a lot of infrastructure that you could use fresh water. But on a lot of our partners' islands, they don't have access to fresh water. So we were trialing to see if we could use seawater to do that. And that was kind of contentious when we first brought it up because a lot of people relocate eggs away from the shoreline because too much seawater can cause the eggs to decrease in moisture and can increase embryonic mortality. You can pickle them in the saltywater. Basically, yeah. So we were trying to find like that sweet spot of okay, what's enough to cool the nest, but also not enough to cause harm, right? And so we were able to simulate different rainfall events, and we found that a simulated rainfall event of 120 mils of seawater is enough to cool the nest and also produce males as well.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's so cool.
SPEAKER_03So do you have to go out with your watering can and water all your eggs every day for their whole gestation, or how do you how does it work?
SPEAKER_00No, so there's a time period in development where it's most likely that the gonads are differentiating into the male and female parts. And so that's typically when we try and cool the nest in that thermal sensitive period.
SPEAKER_03Is it like one week or what's the timing?
SPEAKER_00So it was the middle third of development. So if you say you have a 60-day period of development, it's between 20 and 40 days. But we did an experiment and we narrowed this down to closer to 50% of development. But that changes. So not only does the temperature sand dictate whether or not it's male or female, it also dictates like how long your development is as well. So hottest in temperatures will also increase development. So you end up getting like quite smaller, more energetic hatchlings that are from hoterness.
SPEAKER_02It's always a flow-on effect, isn't there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
Does relocation harm hatchlings?
SPEAKER_03They are relocating turtle eggs from Rain Island because rising sea levels are washing that that low-lying beach away. That's the first time that that's been done on that scale. But I believe, Dr. Smith, you're doing research to make it more widespread so you can save more eggs. What can you tell us about that?
SPEAKER_00Right. So I have this project called Healthy Hatchlings. It's definitely my baby. And not only does it let me play with baby turtles all the time, which is awesome. But we're also looking at the impact of relocation on hatchling fitness. So relocation has been shown to not impact hatching success. So like the amount of hatchlings that are produced, but by you know changing a lot of the incubation environment, like moisture, sand composition, egg density, that kind of thing, we could indirectly be impacting how fit those turtles are. And by that I mean like how fast do they crawl through the sand, how fast do they swim, how easy is it for them to flip themselves back over? And this can directly relate to their survivability. So by relocating, are we somehow producing not the best quality hatchlings that we possibly can? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so that's setting we're not setting them up for the best start at life if the relocation is weakening them in some way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I just say watch this space because I'll have the answer for you in a couple of months.
SPEAKER_03Oh, we'll be on to that.
SPEAKER_02I want to know about that.
SPEAKER_03It must be a fun metric. You're trying to measure how energetic they are, how well they crawl. It's like you're putting them through boot camp. Boot camp. Yeah. Yeah, I call it hatchlings Olympics.
SPEAKER_01Stop it.
SPEAKER_03Do you put little hurdles in front of them to see how well they can jump over them and things?
SPEAKER_00No. But yeah, we do have like these little raceway tracks, and they're basically just gutter filled with sand or water, and we see how fast they crawl and how fast they swim.
SPEAKER_02There's so many factors to it, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02It's incredible. Please
Turtle magnetic powers
SPEAKER_02tell us the amazing adaptation that these little turtles have. How do they find their way back to where they're nesting? So where they're born, they go back, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so most of the time the nesting females usually come back to their natal beach, but they can have a buffer about 200 kilometers for this, so there is some flexibility in that too. Right. Um and they do this because they have magnetite in their brain, which allows them to, you know, when they're in the nest incubating, they pinpoint to the earth's magnetic field, and it's kind of like an internal GPS, and that's how they find their way back. About 30 years later.
SPEAKER_02So isn't that crazy? I don't even know which street's Lake Street, and I've lived it my whole life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my my internal GPS is. Yeah, I'm terrible.
SPEAKER_03I think some cultures believe that you have a special tie to the place where you're born, they bury the placenta, and people say that they can always feel it calling them. Sorry, I shouldn't I shouldn't speak on behalf of other cultures, but I've heard this amazing story.
SPEAKER_02You are just like a vault of information over there, aren't you, Teddy?
SPEAKER_03Well, when I hear an interesting story, it sticks. If
Light pollution and other threats
SPEAKER_03we're talking about the uh gender balancing steps like the irrigation with the water in cans, are these methods going to be enough to save sea turtles in the long term?
SPEAKER_00The short answer to that is I'm gonna be a little bit pessimistic and say no, mostly because sea turtles are really hammered, you know, in their nesting beaches because a lot of us, our coastal ecosystems are really highly urbanized. They're hammered with any kind of anthropogenic impact you could think of. So that's just one of the methods that we can do to combat one of the threats that they face. But it should be more of a holistic approach. So combating things like rising sea levels and urbanization, light pollution is also a really big impact for our hatchlings as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, our listeners might not know that turtles use the light of the moon to navigate down the sand and into the water. And so perhaps we're not giving them enough credit when they accidentally fall off a ridge and end up upside down. Maybe they got off track because they were walking towards a street light or something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03They write to a flame.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's right. Or me to a sausage roll. So that's why it's very strict regulations. If anyone lives near nesting turtles along the street, streetlights are out, make sure that your house lights are off so that they don't mix because if it's overcast, right, they'll follow the next light and it could be your carport or whatever. Yeah. They do a U-turn. I think we had Prancer and Dancer, the two little hatchlings years ago that did that. Did you hear about them?
SPEAKER_00I didn't know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think they hatched down near Mission Beach and it was an overcast night, and someone had their Christmas tree lights on on the street on the house, and they did a U-turn and they walked up the beach and tried to cross the road. Oh my goodness. Yeah, they got caught. They found them.
SPEAKER_03Christmas ruins the turtles. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they headed to the light.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, don't go towards the lights. Don't go toward Brett, you know that better than I've seen a couple of those in my time.
SPEAKER_02Brett's used up most of his nine lives. Yeah, I've got none left. You see a rubbish truck come and just push me up the way 'cause I don't have the ability to dodge it anymore.
SPEAKER_03So I didn't really need any more reasons to dislike Christmas lights. Getting getting too much. Getting in my Grinch mode. But now I have another reason. At least not at the beach anyway. So I think people are starting to get more education not to go with a flashlight or a torch shining it on nesting turtles. Researchers use like a red light, don't you?
SPEAKER_00Most of the time, yeah. It's been shown that red light causes the least amount of damage in in that respect, but basically no light is good light. Yeah, that's right. There's um there's a code of practice of how to view nesting turtles.
SPEAKER_02But like if Karen turns up and wants to start getting integram photos and gets in amongst the nests and gets caught, can she be fined?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah, and there has been a few scenarios of it, I think.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, don't get between the baby turtles in the ocean. They've got enough problems to deal with, like the seagulls trying to eat them and and everything else for them to be able to survive.
SPEAKER_02So nothing's more nervous than a hatchling popping out of the nest. I've seen so many funny memes like war zones and bombs going off and missiles and they're just running for their lives, the poor little things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I'm gonna have a controversial opinion here. I always see people trying to fend off seagulls and birds for hatchlings and stuff. I would probably recommend against that. Um because birds gotta eat too. It's like part of their part of their natural diet.
SPEAKER_02You said exactly that's exactly what I say to my customers every day. You know, if you see them, the birds are gotta eat. It's it's the natural course, right?
SPEAKER_00That's why the sea turtles lay so many eggs and they I mean, could you imagine if every single sea turtle hatchling made it to maturity, we'd they'd be like rats in the sea. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, we do need a higher survival rate now that we've wiped so many out, but the seabirds are very important on the Great Barry Reef as well. And contrary to many people's belief, feeding them your chips is not going to solve that problem. Even though they wanna come and eat your channel.
SPEAKER_02I think they make that choice themselves, mate.
SPEAKER_03We need them to make better choices.
The cute animal bias in conservation
SPEAKER_03Okay, so I love sea turtles. They are absolutely worth us doing everything we can for them. But there are thousands of marine species who are suffering from the impacts of climate change, and I don't know if we're going to be able to allocate the same amount of volunteers and resources to helping all the species. Are we suffering from cuteness bias where we are focusing so many conservation efforts on turtles because they're big and charismatic? I mean, the little crabs and mollusks must be suffering in the hot sand as well, presumably, and do they get to have someone come along and give them a cold shower as well?
SPEAKER_00Uh this is such an interesting topic because we absolutely do suffer from cuteness bias for sea turtles as well. And I think it's great that they are used as this icon for the reef and used as an education tool. In my experience though, I'm not drowning in money to do this research and to do conservation, so it's a really hard question to answer as well.
SPEAKER_03So even the turtles don't really have that many resources, let alone any of the other species. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, but I guess you're correct in in saying that there are hundreds of volunteer groups, just I mean, just in Queensland, that are working on their local nesting beaches, and that's awesome as well. And yeah, and there's not a crab association for Mackay or you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Maybe we need a crab expert, but I think, for example, crabs eat juvenile crownathorn starfish, so they they all have a really important role to play, and sometimes we don't understand how important a small and underappreciated creature is until they suddenly disappear and the entire food web goes out of whack. So it's hard to know. But I think we've got to do everything we can, and that includes doing the work with the turtles.
Galapagos, Tahiti and seasickness
SPEAKER_03So your research has been really varied. Dr. Smith, are there any other interesting highlights that you'd like to share which I haven't already asked you about?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes. One of my career highlights was going to the Galapagos with Dr. Kathy Townsend as well.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00And we've got uh a few friends over there that work on turtles, but also a lot of the marine mammals over there as well. And so I also get really seasick, which is not great for a marine scientist.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's why you hang out of a helicopter, mate.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. I don't get airsick though, so that's great. Yeah. And that's why I do a lot of work on nesting beaches. I'm like, you know, just come to me, please. And uh yeah, so we spent two weeks sailing around the Galapagos Islands collecting some genetic samples from oh, we saw blue whales, pilot whales. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I was throwing up, but I thought I saw the blue whale.
SPEAKER_03Wow, I am so jealous. Not about the throwing up part, but the Galapagos definitely love to get over there. I mean, speaking of this being the part of the show where we add expensive things to our bucket list. Yes. You've been to some pretty cool places, okay. So you so Galapagos, what are some of the other best places you've dived on snorkel?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I went to Tahiti last year to visit some of the French Polynesian researchers. That was pretty spectacular.
SPEAKER_02Oh, good. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I went to Hawaii last month as well.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I think we need to end it there. Thanks for listening, everyone.
SPEAKER_03Everyone out there is thinking I'm in the wrong career. Yeah. That we all need to be doing what Dr. Smith is doing.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
Highlights, lowlights, and hope
SPEAKER_03What is the best part of your job?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I think we pretty much nailed it with uh I get to go to these like really amazing places. Sure, I'm like working really, really hard when I'm there, but it's still amazing to get to go to these places. And also for my job, I work with a lot of indigenous ranger groups and traditional owner groups as well. And so I think the best part of my job is I not only get to see the impact of my research on the ecosystem, but also how it positively impacts community as well. And that's something that I I really treasure.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_03What is the saddest or hardest part of your job? I mean, it must have been pretty sad when you were rescuing those sick turtles off of Harvey Bay.
SPEAKER_00I think the saddest part, and I was thinking about this on the way over, the saddest part of my job is that I don't really get sad anymore. And it's just I've become so desensitized to a lot of and I like talk about really awful things all day, every day, and I'm and I've really become desensitized to the horrific things that happen.
SPEAKER_02It's not a bad thing though, because because then you're hyper focused on fixing the problem and looking after the animals.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you can't you can't help them if you're breaking down all the time. It's the same as paramedics. I couldn't do what they do. No way. But someone has to be able to stay focused on the action that they need to take action on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I feel the same way. I we talk about marine threats constantly and so it's become a very rolls off the tongue topic. But sometimes you need to sit down and remind yourself to to feel it. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it does. And I and I have to do that at work sometimes because I'm always standing in front of people and teaching them. That's why I go in early and sit there with my coffee and just hang out with the animals and just zone out and and just be amongst them and appreciate them as much as I can.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I think it's not about thinking, okay, what sad or hard feelings do I need to explore necessarily. It's more like the feeling of how much you love the turtles or how much you love the ocean is a really good one to explore. And that's when you really remember why you're doing this and why it's so important.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and people don't want it sugarcoated either. You know, we have to say the good and the bad every day in the shows. We have to say what's affecting the animals and what's happening to them. And you'll get people come up afterwards and they'll go, that was really hard to listen to, but we needed to hear it. Thank you so much for giving us the real story and not sugarcoating it, because then we know how we can help fix the problem. So that's really cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so speaking of talking about hard things every day, we know, as we've just discussed, turtles are really facing it from every direction. There's the there's floods, there's contaminants and pollution in the water, there's the rising sea levels, there's the the hot sand. What gives you hope?
SPEAKER_00I have so much hope and excitement for the next generation of marine scientists that are coming through. I work with so many great scientists, they all are all so passionate about what they do. And yeah, I'm just really excited to see where we go from here. And like I said, the greatest part of my job is working with people, and I work with the greatest people on earth. That's a great answer.
SPEAKER_03Wow. I feel the same way. There's so many amazing people doing amazing things. So any listeners out there feeling a bit alone or despairing about the problems in the ocean, you're not alone. There's a lot of really passionate people working on solutions like yourself, Dr. Smith, and many, many other brilliant minds. They do need your support though. So if you're listening, make sure you check out some of the turtle rehabilitation work that's
How to volunteer with turtles
SPEAKER_03being done in Queensland. Where else can people head if they say want to volunteer with the turtles?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I really recommend the the Queensland Government have a great program run out of Monopo, which is near Bundaberg. And so if you want to get hands-on experience with nesting logheads, you can sign up. You don't need to have any experience. They do a lot of training on the job as well. So I would try and look up the Queensland Government Turtle Research. Amazing project.
How else can people help?
SPEAKER_03Yep. What can people do if they can't make it to the Great Barrier Reef? Can they do things in their own lives to help seagrasses and turtles and the ocean in general?
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. I think being an advocate for the ocean and the reef and turtles in general is is really important. And just keeping up to date with the research that's been going on, read, you know, that's that's the number one thing that I asked about.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, everyone thinks that in order to save the planet, they need to be uh leaning out of helicopters. But really, it comes down to it, even just reading, looking at what the science is and listening to your favorite podcast. Talk to your friends about all this stuff as well. Like that's what I recommend. Raise the awareness. Let people know what they don't know about turtles in the ocean. James Cook University, marine ecologist and turtle whisperer, Dr. Caitlin Smith, thanks for all your amazing work and thanks for joining us on Word on the Reef today. Thank you so much for watching. Thanks so much for having me. And thanks to you, all our listeners, for joining us on Word on the Reef with me, Tanya Murphy, and co-host Brett Goodband. Don't forget to celebrate Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday, which is today. Yes, happy birthday, Sir David. We'll be back next week with more marine science adventures, 10am every Friday on Cans FM 89.1. This show is broadcast live from the Cans FM studio, which is on the land of the Yidingji people. We'd also like to extend our respect to elders past and present. Don't forget, you can follow us on Instagram.com slash word on the wreath podcast. That's all for this week. Best fishes. Safe diving. See you next time.
