After taking a water taxi to work last summer, Sarah Callan got to witness endangered Hawksbill Sea Turtles hatch from their eggs at the Centro de Vida Marina, an aquarium in Santa Marta, Colombia.
“They actually had 101 sea turtles hatch while we were at the facility. I've never seen hatchlings before, and it was the most magical experience for me,” Callan said.
Callan is the manager of the animal rescue program at Mystic Aquarium. She traveled down to Colombia twice last year, as part of a new push to expand conservation efforts.
Callan and her team traveled along the Colombian coastline, visiting Cartagena, Palomino and different sites in Santa Marta like Tayrona National Park and the Centro de Vida Marina.
“We worked closely with [the Centro’s] vet team and some of their husbandry teams to learn about the different threats that sea turtles are facing,” Callan said.
Those threats include warming temperatures, stronger storms and coastal erosion which reduces their natural habitat, among other climate issues.
She saw over 50 sea turtles get released back into the wild, including Loggerhead and Green Sea Turtles, which are considered endangered species.
Her team also helped establish a first responder program in Colombia modeled after the one they have in Connecticut. Callan said Mystic Aquarium has hundreds of volunteers that respond to hotline calls about marine mammal strandings along the coasts of Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York.
Callan said in Colombia, “They just cover such a big coastline that it's difficult to get these animals the help that they need sometimes…The first responder program could be very helpful.”
According to Callan, Mystic Aquarium’s sea turtle rehabilitation program has expanded over the past several years, allowing them to take in about 20 to 30 sea turtles a year. However, Callan said they’re a migratory species, so their conservation goes beyond local efforts.
“In order to have the biggest conservation impact that we possibly could, it really takes making those global partnerships and connecting on an international level to see how we can collaborate to help protect these animals,” Callan said.
Restoring the ‘rainforests of the ocean’
Coral reefs are often called the rainforests of the ocean because of their abundance of biodiversity, said David Cochran, the Senior Director of Fish and Invertebrates at Mystic Aquarium.
“They're these really fragile animals and they've got a lot going against them,” Cochran said.
According to Cochran, climate change is affecting coral reefs worldwide. That includes ocean acidification, which is the lowering of pH levels in the ocean, and human impact such as pollution and boat anchoring which can do physical damage to the reefs.
In traveling to Colombia, Cochran said they’ve been able to do a lot more research that can help protect these threatened creatures.
“We're deploying monitoring equipment, which allows us to look at what species of animals are utilizing those reef areas [and] how [the corals are] doing in real time,” Cochran said.
“We're also diving to collect coral spawn to take to a laboratory setting on shore where they can be settled and studied as they grow, with an intention of replanting them if and when it becomes feasible,” they said.
The collaboration with teams in Colombia will help with research and conservation efforts back home in Connecticut, Cochran said.
“I know sometimes you don't think about coral reefs and things like that when you're up in New England, but there's deep water reefs off the coast of New England,” they said. “We can bring back the same conservation messaging about what people can do in their own day to day life.”
Building bridges for ‘big tent science’
David Hudson has been conducting marine biology research in Colombia since 2011, when he started his post-doctorate as a U.S. Student Fulbright Fellow in the country’s capital, Bogotá. He’s the bridge that brought Mystic Aquarium to Colombia’s coastline.
“We've built this little band that has traveled down and done regular work in the Caribbean to advance… the ideas that we can piece together to get more knowledge transfer across these locations and across the language barrier,” Hudson said.
As a fluent Spanish speaker, he coordinated that band of researchers through his non-profit, Remote Ecologist. The organization provides opportunities to scientists who want to continue their conservation work, but are struggling to find their footing. Those scientists range from undergraduate students needing volunteer hours, to people who have finished their PhD but haven’t found a job yet.
Building these bridges between Connecticut and the Caribbean, including northern South America, ultimately promotes ecological conservation as a whole, according to Hudson.
Hudson said building multinational teams can ask and answer questions in a completely different way through the knowledge exchange that can happen once the language barrier is broken through.
“Whether we're working in the Caribbean or they're working in coastal Connecticut on our other projects up there, it's really important for us to have this big tent science happening,” he said.
It’s also a way of serving the Latino populations in Connecticut, Hudson said.
Census data shows nearly 30 thousand Colombians call Connecticut home, making them the fifth largest Hispanic group in the state. For Hudson, they’re a big part of the educational and scientific institutions where researchers work.
“I actually was receiving emails from folks locally going, ‘Wow, you guys are going to my country. This is incredible.’ The sentiment of that exchange and that ‘science is for all of humanity’ was a major piece when we were thinking about the messaging and about the impact that we wanted to have on this,” Hudson said.
That messaging includes not just the science part of their research, but the practical conservation efforts people can do at home.
Hudson said folks in Connecticut can do a lot to help marine life both here and abroad, such as using phosphate-free fertilizers if you have waterfront property and reducing your carbon output.
Other examples include participating in beach cleanings, being mindful of water usage, and preventing pollutants from going down the drain.
Those who want to get more heavily involved can even get in the water through Remote Ecologist programs that take recreational divers out into the field, Hudson said.
In the meantime, the research continues. Hudson said the Mystic Aquarium teams have at least another five trips planned to Colombia this year for coral and sea turtle conservation work. Some of the coral work is even branching off to the British Virgin Islands.
