What do you think of my idea of saving the lives of sea turtle hatchlings?

I guess you did not bother to think about what all those hundreds of thousands of additional surviving turtles, who all have to eat, would do to the ecosystem.

Of course the robot baby turtles wouldn’t be used all the time in every sea turtle nesting site.

The sea turtles are endangered. This would help to eliminate that as needed.

While I love turtles, I’d be very hesitant to interfere in the circle of life.

I have friends in Florida who volunteer with an organization to protect the hatchlings and nests on the beaches. That low-tech solution seems more viable to me.

I think it is brilliant! You don’t have to cover every beach. You’re just improving their odds by a small amount. That might actually have a small positive effect. After a few generations it can make a difference.
The execution will be difficult though. I know how to give a small shock in air. I don’t know how to do that in conductive sea water though.
And we’d need some way of collecting them automatically. GPS return to shore? Small squib release float mechanism?

Maybe have separate dedicated units for land and sea. The land crawler would be easier. It can even be solar powered and recharged.

I guess you need to take into account the balance in the ecosystem. Are so many turtles born because Mother Nature knows only one in many hundreds will survive? If too many survive what happens? Also, will the birds starve without the turtles? It is possible that too many birds are eating the turtles and interfering might be a good thing to do.

I know people who live on the shore where turtles hatch keep their lights off so the turtles don’t go the wrong direction.

So. Many. Problems.

First – you’re okay hurting animals because they try to eat what they’ve evolved to survive on for thousands of years? What will they hunt instead? What if the predators rely on sea turtles to get a large share of their calory intake? Some of those predator species – such as dolphins – are also endangered. Even if we assume that most of the predatory species do have other prey, what will then happen to those populations? Will we need moon crab robots next, because the gulls are unusually hungry and turning to a different species for dinner?

Second, I doubt you’ve considered that many animals swallow their prey immediately. Are you okay with the amount of pain a robot could cause internally? Are you cool with internal bleeding to teach those pesky predators a lesson? I’m not.

Lastly, you’re forgetting about the biggest predator hatchlings face: us. Because humans settle close to beaches, nesting habitats no longer feel safe and aren’t used. Pollution is destroying the seagrass turtles need to eat, and some get tangled up in plastic. Climate change affects the sand temperature, which interferes with the distribution of sex in developing hatchlings. Poachers steal the eggs and hunt adult sea turtles. Because of light pollution, hatchlings walk right into traffic that they assume is moonlight reflected on the ocean.

The organizations @janbb mentioned do a great job of protecting hatchlings by educating locals and building fenced nesting areas. They offer money for nests spotted by locals, then dig up the eggs and guide the hatchlings into the sea when they’re ready to leave the protected nesting zone. This process already increases the hatchlings’ chances tremendously, without doing any damage to local wildlife. It even gives the (often poor) potential poachers a meaningful alternative source of money.

I can tell you have good intentions. Maybe consider donating to one of the organizations dedicated to helping sea turtles? I volunteered with these people a while ago, and I can vouch for their tremendous love of turtles. Moreover, the staff and volunteers keep an eye out for other animals in trouble. We treated an injured toucan when I was there, for example. Locals know where to go with helpless wild animals – which is especially important in the more rural areas, where vets are scarce.

I’m no expert, but I heard what some sea turtles are mainly suffering from is lack of breeding beaches due to all the humans on their beaches all the time. With COVID, many more beaches have suddenly been available to turtles… maybe we need more turtle preserve beaches, at least for part of the year.

@longgone The birds survive OK during the many months of the year when the hatchling turtles aren’t around. Also they will likely adapt when the sea turtles have gone extinct. The birds tend swoop down to grab the baby turtles in their beaks. That’s when they get zapped. The fish that swallow the hatchlings would likely quickly spit them out. If not then this experiment would have to factor in the quantity predators killed and determined if it is acceptable.

I didn’t forget that humans present a great hazard (not likely the greatest hazard) with costal developed, pollution (including plastics and petroleum), fishing nets and possibly climate change. Also simple poaching of eggs and turtles

The deck is stacked against the sea turtles. I simply though that this crazy idea might help.

Thenegatives listed by @longgone are formidable, but might be mitigated somewhat through trials whereby the robots are introduced in minimal numbers and the effects on predators documented and analyzed. But there are no doubt species of predators themselves threatened with extinction who are conditioned to depend on hatchlings for their sustenance and nourishment of their offspring. In fact it is more than likely that such predators would have breeding cycles timed to coincide with bounties of hatchlings. But my cynicism regarding the idea is around the sheer expense and technical sophistication required to research and implement the program. It seems to me, it would be cheaper to simply monitor the beaches with cameras, and retrieve the newly laid eggs for reburial on protected beaches free of predators habituated to the timing of hatching.

Nature is what it is and armies of robot turtles aren’t going to improve it. It would be better to clean up the oceans so turtles and other sea creatures don’t choke on our rubbish.

i wonder if simple, stationary decoys with moving flippers would help. The birds would swoop down and try to pick it up thereby giving other hatchlings a few more seconds to make it to the water.
Of course a lot of data would be needed to see if this is effective. It does not have to be a 100% solution. It just needs to help them out a little.

@flutherother Preach. If anyone hasn’t watched A Plastic Ocean on Netflix, I highly recommend it.

Just from a technical point-of-view:
– it takes a lot of power to develop a voltage that will shock. A tiny turtle robot would have to carry enough power to crawl and swim to its target rendezvous boat and enough to shock whatever tried to pick it up every time that happens.
– being in salt water could upset the method of detecting that something is biting.
– being in salt water will definitely affect how well a shocking mechanism will work.

I think @LuckyGuy‘s idea to have some stationary decoys might be more practical, you could bury the battery and control bits and just have a visible fake turtle. Similarly, if you solve the other salt-water problems for the swimming decoy, the battery and control bits could be suspended well below the floating fake turtle.

I have to say that I think humans putting more mechanical things in the ocean is a really bad idea.

As I said above, I think protected areas and volunteer guardians is a more sensible tactic.

As a first cut I wouldn’t bother with the ocean part. I’d go with a land based experiment only. I would attach inexpensive decoys with movable flippers, firmly to the ground and (maybe) make them taste bad. There would me no shocking function.
Then I’d set up video cameras to and invite some grad students to review and collate the data to see if the decoys made any difference. Compare days with them and days without and see if it increased the chances of the little guys reaching the water.
You might even get a grant for this.

Thanks for all the responses.

I was just day dreaming and this wild idea just came to me.

Extinction seems to be the norm on this little known planet. Of all the species that have lived on Earth, 99.9% are now extinct. A lot of biologists think that we are now going through another mass extinction faze. Enjoy the sea turtle while it lasts. Such a beautiful beast.

@dabbler If you take the small condenser from the engine of a vintage car and attached a 1.5 volt AAA battery then it will deliver a shock that you will never forget.

@gondwanalon Large-scale extinctions tend to happen on a geological time scale (as in, every 25 to 100 MILLION years or so apart), when the planet changes due to something like a massive asteroid strike or other cataclysmic environmental change.

The current extinction crisis is coming about because of human activity (overpopulation, overdevelopment of land, pollution, destructive industrial & agricultural practices, climate change, etc), over a time scale of mere decades and centuries, and we know about it. That makes it very different, and the inaccurate and stuck thinking about it is the main thing perpetuating it and making it worse.

The beaches here in SE NC are filled with advocates for the sea turtles. Nesting sites are cordoned off and volunteers sit by them day and night to protect the eggs. When they hatch and the babies start making their way to the water, the volunteers move into protection mode and shoo away the predatory birds. Seems to be a lot easier than robot turtles. And less potentially fatal to the birds.

@seawulf575 Thanks! That sounds like good news to me. I’ve seen a sea turtle nesting site on the big island Hawai’i with signs and fences to keep people away. In the films that I watch in TV the biologists didn’t want to interfere with the baby turtle and bird and other predator interactions. Also that is the same sentiment that the biologists expressed on my tour of the Galápagos Islands about 10 years ago. Looks like things have changed probably for the better.

This article covers a research project that used GPS embedded decoy eggs placed with other eggs to see where they end up.
In Costa Rica there is a thriving but illegal trade in turtle eggs. They could track when the eggs were moved, the location of the market and ultimately the final consumer.

I’m still thinking about fake turtle hatchlings placed on the sand during the hatching season. That would make a great research project. .

@LuckyGuy I hope that the decoy eggs help to stop the poaching.

Hope that you come up with a good idea.

How about a squadron of a few dozen small (Frigatebird size) drones that hover just above the baby turtles as they work their way to the sea. As the predatory bird approaches the drone chases the bird (while making disturbing noises) then quickly returns to protect the baby turtle. Of course some the birds will get lucky and get a baby turtle but many more baby turtles would reach the sea.

@gondwanalon We don’t want all of the turtles to make it. That would lead to some unintended consequences. We want to increase their chances by something like 20%-30% so their numbers increase gradually.

We know hawks and falcons predate on seagulls in the air. Fox, weasels get them while on the ground. Imagine a few hawk-like decoy drones flying over the area. That might cause them to scramble.

A flock of mourning doves visits my bird feeders every day. Every so often they will bolt off the ground and scatter. Usually when that happens I can spot a hawk hanging around in an apple or pine tree. I wonder if that would work the same way on seagulls.

@gondwanalon I used to work an environmental job here in NC and have dealt with sea turtles. There is a Sea Turtle hospital up the coast and we would send injured turtles there. Also, if we captured any sea turtles on our property, we notified the state dept of natural resources, tagged them, and released them back into the wild. Sea turtles are a big deal down here. As a side note about tagging, I got a call from the state sea turtle coordinator (yes, there is such a position) one time about a turtle we tagged. A group monitoring sea turtles down by Mexico was looking at the hundreds of them that show up on an island down there and they noticed one that was tagged and they didn’t recognize the tag. It was one of ours…from about 20 years ago. It was nice to hear they are still around out there!