Experts Find Some Swimming Sea Animals with Mysterious Patterns

KOMPAS.com – Several sea ​​animal, including green turtle, tiger sharks, and Antarctic fur seals have been observed swimming in mysterious patterns.

Researchers say that these creatures swam in circles. However, the cause of this behavior is still a mystery.

As quoted from New Scientist, Friday (19/3/2021) researcher from the University of Tokyo in Japan Tomoko Narazaki accidentally discovered this strange behavior while studying navigation turtle green (Chelonia mydas) off the coast of Mohéli, one of the Comoros islands in the Indian Ocean, and the Japanese island of Chichijima in the Pacific Ocean.

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Narazaki has tracked the movement of green turtles when they were removed from their breeding grounds.

The tracking data then showed the turtles’ swirling movements when they returned to the coastal waters from where they were nesting.

According to researchers, a turtle swims in a large circle 76 times with each rotation taking 16 to 20 seconds.

Initially, Narazaki thought that the tracking marker on the turtle that had been installed might be damaged.

The markers used on these turtles have a much higher spatial resolution than most GPS trackers.

The marker can track the animal’s 3D movement and update it every second by recording depth, acceleration and magnetic information.

Narazaki also confirmed his findings with colleagues who used the same 3D tracking markers with other animals.

It turned out that he and his colleagues found that the animals that swim in a circle pattern are not only turtles.

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They reveal the spinning behavior also occurs in tiger sharks, king penguins, Antarctic fur seals, whale sharks and Cuvier’s beaked whales.

One of the researchers’ findings found 272 spinning behavior was observed in four tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) off the coast of Hawaii.

In each cycle, the tiger shark spins in a circle with a diameter of 9.4 meters 2 to 30 times.

They swim at a relatively constant depth and last for 5.6 minutes.

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This spinning swimming behavior is not yet clear what it means. However, researchers say, if the behavior may be related to foraging for food.

Another possible explanation is that behavior has something to do with navigation.

“The turtles rotate at points that appear navigational,” said Narazaki.

How green turtles navigate is not well understood, but previous research has shown that they are capable of detecting magnetic fields.

“This spinning behavior appears to be suitable for detecting magnetic fields. Spinning allows turtles to detect magnetic fields from multiple directions and repeating the behavior will provide multiple measurements to help calibrate their position,” explained Narazaki.

Next, he and his colleagues plan to study this behavior in more animals and other species.

In addition, he wanted to ascertain whether navigation was the reason behind the rotating behavior.

These findings have been published in the journal iScience.

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