Aug 10 1980
From The Space Library
DOC reported that the Nimbus 7 satellite successfully tracked between October 16, 1979, and June 15, 1980, the 800-mile journey of a 2121-pound loggerhead turtle called Diane from a point south of Gulfport, Miss., past Louisiana and Texas to an area in the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville, Tex., where Diane apparently shed the signal transmitter. (NOAA officials said that, after a break in transmission, a mystery developed when the signal resumed, moving inland to stop in Kansas-far from the turtle's ocean or river habitat. A fisherman had found the 7-pound transmitter on a beach near Port Arthur, Tex., and had taken it home, where he used the $5,000 device as a doorstop.)
Robert Timko, electronic engineer at NOAA's Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) laboratory in Galveston, said that no technology except satellite tracking could have followed a wide-ranging and generally inaccessible animal like the loggerhead turtle (a threatened species) over so large an area. NMFS would use the data to identify feeding, nesting, and mating areas to help manage the stock of sea turtles. The test was inspired by previous work with polar bears, which were tracked from 60 to 90 days. (NOAA Release 80-102)
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