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Volunteers from the South Carolina Aquarium release a rehabilitated Loggerhead Sea Turtles on Friday in Isle of Palms, South Carolina. The turtle was one of two that were rescued and nursed back to health by the sea turtle hospital at the aquarium.
Richard Ellis / Getty Images
Volunteers from the South Carolina Aquarium release a rehabilitated Loggerhead Sea Turtle.
According to this OurAmazingPlanet story on msnbc.com, there are leatherback turtles in the Pacific and Atlantic, but they travel at different speeds according to their different food sources:
"We saw very big differences in their traveling speeds from their nesting beaches to their foraging grounds," said Helen Bailey, an ecologist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science who led the study. "We take that to mean one population is stopping to forage on a nice dense patch of prey, while the other group keeps moving because it's constantly in search of food."
These differences in swimming and eating habits may hold important clues for helping leatherback turtles around the world recover and thrive, Bailey told OurAmazingPlanet.
Atlantic leatherback turtles seem to be doing OK, but the Pacific population could be extinct in the near future, Bailey said.
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