NCL America Continues its Support of NOAA Turtle Release
Jan 17, 2007
Honolulu - January 17, 2007 --- NCL America will help the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, National Fisheries Service with a second turtle release of 45 small 5-month old Hawaiian green turtles from the passenger-liner Pride of Hawai'i. Captive bred and nurtured at Sea Life Park, the turtles will be released 3-5 miles off the east side of the Big Island on the evening of Tuesday, January 16, 2007. The release will be overseen by George Balazs, Marine Turtle Biologist with the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, National Marine Fisheries Service.
The turtles to be released were in seawater rearing tanks being held at the NOAA secure research facility at Kewalo Basin on O'ahu awaiting their departure Monday. The turtles were reared at Sea Life Park over the past five months as part of a collaborative research project on temperature dependent sex determination in the Hawaiian green turtle. Dr. Thane Wibbels, a world authority on sex determination in turtles with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, served as the lead scientist for this project. The study has now been successfully completed for the 2006 nesting season, hence the turtles are ready to be released into their natural environment to begin their journey in life.
The turtles are the product of Sea Life Park's highly successful captive breeding program conducted annually since the late 1970's. The turtles are all of known Hawaiian genetic stock composition. They are vigorous, healthy, and suitable for release into off shore pelagic waters where they would normally live at this small size (from one ounce hatchlings to 15 lb juveniles). The 45 turtles have each been tagged by NOAA with tiny Passive Integrated Transponders (PIT tags) for long term individual identification. A special hand-held scanner is needed at close range to detect the tags, such as when they may be found nesting ashore 20 or more years from now. Electronic tags that transmit to earth-orbiting satellites are not being put on these turtles because the turtles are too small for this technology. Satellite tags were put on four larger captive-bred turtles released by NOAA and Sea Life Park from the NCLA Pride of Hawai‘i in October 2006.
The 45 turtles were taken aboard Pride of Hawai'i in Honolulu on Monday afternoon January 15, 2007. The ship departed at 8pm and docked in Hilo the next day. The turtles will remain on the ship in Hilo. From time to time they will be "exercised" and fed in a special portable sea water pool taken aboard the ship for this purpose. The ship will depart from Hilo that same day in the late afternoon and proceed to an area off the east coast of the Big Island for passengers to view the volcano's lava flow. Along that leg of the trip the ship will stop 3-5 miles from shore and the turtles will be carefully lowered over the side in baskets and safely released into the sea.
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