Comments on: How leatherback turtles grow huge on a diet of jelly

By: div

div — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 01:21:08 +0000

“dense but sparse”

I know what you meant, but that is confusing! Both words are essentially antonyms and can function equally well in either role you’ve placed them in. Perhaps rich/thick/(actually dense is pretty good as long as its twin isn’t of the same order) and scattered/sporadic/widely separated.

By: rdiac

rdiac — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:28:43 +0000

I was under the impression most tetrapods and fish would have trouble surviving on jellyfish owing to the relative paucity of several nutrients, this also being the reason jellyfish can thrive in oceanic deserts. *couldn’t find a reference sorry*
So, does this mean that these guys know something about personal biomes making up the difference that the rest of us don’t? Anyhow, good to know that when we’ve eaten all the fish we can still go jellyfish and turtles instead of just plain jellyfish. I was almost worried there…

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:47:47 +0000

@Dan Milton + MattK – Folks, you’re right. I got confused in the reporting and corrected the piece. Sorry about that.

By: ChasCPeterson

ChasCPeterson — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:24:12 +0000

The problem with a diet of ‘jelly’ isn’t that it’s non-nutritious. The ‘jelly’ in question isn’t Welch’s Grape, it’s the mesoglea of the jellyfish, the dry matter of which is mostly collagen and other perfectly nutritious proteins. The problem is that it’s mostly not dry matter, but water, and seawater at that. My guess is that the major costs to eating such a densely distributed food are osmoregulatory.

By: Bobby LaVesh

Bobby LaVesh — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:46:32 +0000

Could you give your source for migration from Canada to the Indo-Pacific
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All these centuries have passed and we could have followed the turtles to find the North West passage all along.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:06:08 +0000

Hi folks,

A quick holding statement – I’m at a conference, but I’ll check this when I get the time. Entirely possible I got this wrong. More soon.

By: MattK

MattK — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 02:09:57 +0000

I agree with Dan, I think there is some confusion somewhere as the Atlantic population of leatherbacks (merely endangered) and the Pacific population (imminent extinction) are separate to the best of my knowledge.

By: Dan Milton

Dan Milton — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:17:40 +0000

Impressive journeys by leatherback turtles have been tracked, but what I’ve found on the Web shows them crossing the Atlantic or Pacific routinely but not going from one ocean to another.
Could you give your source for migration from Canada to the Indo-Pacific?