Within the framework of the activities of the Aquarium La Rochelle, the Centre d'Etudes et de Soins pour les Tortues Marines (C.E.S.T.M.) welcomes every year marine turtles stranded or captured accidentally. After long months of care and convalescence, the animals use the return of fine weather to go back to the ocean.
Follow the course of a sea turtle, from observation to return to the ocean.
Discover the number of individuals who have been able to return to their natural environment in 32 years of C.E.S.T.M. activities.
At 9:30 a.m. on June 3, 2022, when the tidal coefficient was 64 and the tide was ebbing, the team from the Center for Studies and Care for Marine Turtles, its scientific partners and several dozen schoolchildren gathered to attend the new departure for Légende and Moana towards the open sea.
Since 2008, the CESTM has been conducting a satellite monitoring programme for some of the marine turtles it rehabilitates.
It makes it possible to follow in quasi real time the turtles handed over to the Ocean. Thus, their positions recorded during their journey, combined with the data of various oceanographic parameters, make it possible to highlight the factors which influence their journey offshore (temperature, surface currents…).
Of the 8 marine turtles that returned to their natural environment in 2020, three have been equipped with a satellite transmitter and one of them is still working. It allows to follow the route of Kemen.
