It's hard to track male turtles. Researchers say a new method could help manage at-risk populations

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Previously, researchers had to sample hatchlings or multiple eggs to study male turtles.

Credit: Breanna Ondich

Every year during turtle nesting season, researchers get their best chance to study female turtles as they come ashore. Now, a University of Georgia researcher has a solution for tracking the often difficult-to-find males.

Nesting season begins in May. It’s an ideal time for researchers to track female turtles coming on shore to lay their eggs, but tracking males in challenging.

But UGA associate research scientist Brian Shamblin said a new method of isolating genetic material from male turtles can help, using a single egg, rather than damaging multiple eggs or relying on satellite imagery to track them.

“It makes it possible to take that egg the morning after it was laid, rather than having to be present and interfere with the nesting female," he says. "And then we now can forego handling those hatchlings at all in most cases, so that we don't have to worry about potential impacts to their survival.”

Shamblin hopes to use the method on at-risk species like the loggerhead turtle, which lay fewer eggs, so more hatchlings make it to the sea.