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About This Project
Unlike hard-shelled sea turtles, the leatherback’s soft-shell changes shape relative to their nutritional condition and can be used as a visual indicator of their health. These gentle giants can weigh over 1000 lbs. when foraging, making them a challenge to study at sea. Aided with biotelemetry tags, our goal is to conduct the first study to validate drones as a new, noninvasive technique to analyze leatherback health by analyzing leatherback body condition on nesting and foraging grounds.
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