Tracking Green Turtles in the Great Barrier Reef | Fearless Adventures with Jack Randall
NARRATOR: Jack does crazy things with wild animals to help protect and study them. Really crazy. And maybe dangerous. But Jack is a trained expert. Do not do what Jack does. Seriously. Approaching and handling wild animals can be dangerous. Really. Just don’t do it!
JACK: I’m at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. There’s a Dugong right there. On a mission to study the magnificent sea turtles, who call this place home. Wow! Look at you. This is the Great Barrier Reef. It’s so large, it can be seen from space. The shelter and food the reef provides makes it the perfect habitat for marine turtles. So I’m going to be joining a research team headed by Dr. Ian Bell, and we’re going to be tagging and researching Green Turtles. Green Sea Turtles can swim for thousands of miles. They can live up to 100 years old, but as a species, they’ve been around for over 100 million years. We’ll be using Dr. Bell’s hands-on technique of diving off the boat to catch them. When we spot something, I’ll get to the front of the bow, and dive and try and catch it,and then I can just hang on. All right, we’ve got one. It’s quite a big turtle, if you can see it. Okay, it’s slowing down. We’re actually just literally moving the boat to the point where I can get close enough to jump on it.
IAN: Just be careful, you don’t go too sharp, you know, you don’t want to do a face plant. Ready. Ready.
JACK: Let’s get this one in.
IAN: Heave!
JACK: Woo-hoo! See all these different patterns and colorations. Just perfect. With the catching complete, we’re headed back to the beach to collect important data on this turtle.
SOPHIE: So yeah, first thing we want to do is tag it, so it has a number to go by.
JACK: 33.6 inches. Wow. I’m interested to see how much this guy weighs.
SARA: 85 kilos. SOPHIE: 85 kilos.
JACK: Wow that is impressive! 185 pounds of turtle. That is heavier than me. You can see now how strong and how heavy they actually are. Then it’s doing pretty well, it looks like. JR I’ve named that one. That will rub off, but we actually put that pink paint on, because when we’re about to dive off, if we see any pink paint, we know it’s already been caught this year. But look at how beautiful it is, when you look close up at these turtles, and you start to see the details, how thick and strong that shell really is, a bit of a battle from a little hatchling, to get to the point where they can survive out here on the reef. Anyway, this is time to release this big old Green Turtle. We tag the turtle so that over time, the scientists can study their health, as well as their population and migration patterns. Yes. Amazing. Job done.
NARRATOR:Join me again for more Fearless Adventures. Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.
