May Have Died Seeking Food : Rare Sea Turtle Found on Santa Rosa Island

A rare 700-pound leatherback sea turtle has been found on this island 30 miles off Santa Barbara, where it died apparently after coming ashore to feed.

The creature, which measured more than 6 feet in length, is only the third leatherback that has been found on Southern California beaches in the last 15 years. All three were dead.

The discovery, made Monday by Bill Ehorn, superintendent of Channel Islands National Park, has marine biologists abuzz. Leatherbacks are an endangered species and are rarely seen by humans.

Gary Davis, 43, marine biologist for the park, removed the skull and bones Thursday and transported them to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where they will be held for scientists to study.

Rarely Seen Anywhere

Leatherbacks spend their entire lives--believed to be as long as 100 years--swimming in the ocean, roaming as far as hundreds of miles offshore. They can weigh as much as a ton and are rarely seen by humans, said Karen Bjorndal, director of the Sea Turtle Research Center at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

“Prints in the sand indicate this female leatherback turtle crawled ashore and died not too long before being discovered,” Davis said. Davis conducted an autopsy and could find no eggs or indication of any injury. He was unable to determine the cause of death.

Davis believes the turtle may have gone ashore to feed on jellyfish, its primary food. For the past week beaches in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties have been covered with millions of velella, a small species of jellyfish also known as sailor by the wind.

Ehorn discovered the turtle while riding horseback along a beach on this virtually uninhabited island, which is part of the Channel Islands National Park.

Spotted by Divers

“I had two phone calls from two different recreation divers this week who had been diving off Anacapa Island,” Davis said. “They reported seeing two of the huge turtles swimming off the island and called to find out what they were.”

The leatherback is the only one of seven species of sea turtles without a hard shell. It also has the greatest range.

Leatherbacks nest on remote beaches in southern Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Indonesia and French Guiana, and then swim thousands of miles in colder waters, as far north as Nova Scotia in the Atlantic and Alaska in the Pacific, feeding mostly on jellyfish, Bjorndal said.

Bjorndal noted that although all sea turtles are endangered species, in Indonesia and elsewhere leatherbacks are taken at sea by fishermen. The extremely oily meat is relished as a delicacy.

In Mexico, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, leatherback turtle eggs are eaten as an aphrodisiac because fishermen report seeing leatherback turtles copulating at sea for long periods.