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Small Dinosaur Winds Up on North Oregon Coast |
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Covering 180 miles of Oregon coast travel: Astoria, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Manzanita, Nehalem, Wheeler, Rockaway, Garibaldi, Tillamook, Oceanside, Pacific City, Lincoln City, Depoe Bay, Newport, Waldport, Yachats & Florence.
12/26/07
Secrets of the Season |
Small Dinosaur Winds Up on North Oregon Coast
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| Loggerhead turtle that washed up near Seaside |
Photos by Tiffany Boothe, Seaside Aquarium
(Gearhart, Oregon) – Christmas Eve brought an unusual and ancient traveler to the north Oregon coast, as a large sea turtle washed up just north of Seaside, on a beach in Gearhart.
At about 2:30 p.m., the loggerhead sea turtle was reported still alive after drifting up with the tides. It died shortly after it was recovered by staff at the Seaside Aquarium, dying sometime on Christmas day.
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This is the first sea turtle to come ashore in this area in the last five years. “I talked to the Seattle Aquarium about it and they said they hadn’t found one in 20 years,” said aquarium manager Keith Chandler. “It’s that unusual.”
Sea turtles have been known to be around on this Earth since the age of the dinosaurs.
The
sea turtle was first reported as a green sea turtle, but on further examination
was identified as an adult male loggerhead. The sea turtle is four feet
in length with a three-foot shell, weighing approximately 100 pounds.
Though the age of this turtle is unknown, their life expectancy can exceed
50 years.
Though loggerheads have been spotted as far north as Alaska they only come ashore in this region when distressed.
The aquarium’s Tiffany Boothe said the turtle wound up on shore after a particularly high surf event, but not necessarily because of that. “We get a lot of big waves before a storm,” she said. “He probably followed a warm water current that dissipated, and then got hypothermia. He then found his way up here.”
If the
turtle had survived, it would have been taken by some official agency,
such as the Seattle Aquarium. “They’ve had a lot more experience
with rehabilitating hypothermic turtles. We were just waiting for them
to pick it up, actually.”
Boothe said the turtle could not be put in water immediately, because that would bring its body temperature up too quickly. He was sitting on some towels.
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Since its death, the loggerhead has been stored in a freezer, awaiting word from any official agency that would be interested in it. Many such agencies use these corpses for educational purposes, especially in a case such as this, with a rare and endangered species. But because of the holidays, no one has been present to yet express an interest.
Loggerheads inhabit all oceans, primarily temperate water. They are named after their relatively large heads, which support powerful jaws and enable them to feed on hard-shelled prey, such as crabs and mollusks. Loggerheads are the most abundant species of sea turtle found in U.S. coastal waters. Like all sea turtles the loggerhead are protected in the U.S. and most countries worldwide.
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| Boothe (at left) and Jenny Maxwell with the Aquarium and with BeachConnection.net out on a marine mammal retrieval |
Loggerhead Sea Turtles are found in nearly all of the world's temperate and tropical oceans. In the Pacific Ocean they are found as far north as Alaska and as far south as Chile, however during the winter months loggerhead sea turtles migrate to tropical and subtropical waters.
The
preferred habitat of these sea turtles changes throughout their lives.
Adult females go ashore to lay eggs on steeply sloped, high energy beaches.
Once the babies emerge from the nest they head for the ocean, where they
are found among drifting sargassum mats in warm ocean currents. Older
juveniles and adults are found in coastal waters and tend to prefer rocky
or muddy substrate to sandy ones.
Loggerhead sea turtles differ from other sea turtles in having relatively large heads and reddish coloration.
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