MOL Car Carrier Supports Loggerhead Turtle Migration Route Survey for the Fourth Time

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL; President & CEO: Jotaro Tamura; Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo) cooperated in a loggerhead turtle migration route survey (Note 1) conducted by the Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium by transporting the turtles aboard MOL's car carrier LIBERTY ACE. This initiative began in 2023, and this year marks the fourth time MOL has supported the survey.

July 10: Turtles released slowly, one by one

On June 29, 30 loggerhead turtles were loaded onto the vessel at Kinjo Pier in the Port of Nagoya. After a 10-day voyage, they were released into the Pacific Ocean on July 10 (JST), by two aquarium staff members who had boarded the vessel in Nagoya, together with the vessel's crew.

In 1987, a loggerhead turtle tagged in Japan was found off the coast of San Diego, California, in the United States. This discovery prompted research into the migration route of loggerhead turtles that nest along the coast of Japan and cross the Pacific Ocean to the coastal waters of North America. Subsequently, the Thermal Corridor Hypothesis was proposed, suggesting that loggerhead turtles migrate by using warm-water areas formed by rising seawater temperatures associated with El Niño events as a "thermal corridor."

To verify this hypothesis, the Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium is conducting research on loggerhead turtle migration routes and ecology in collaboration with research institutions in Japan and overseas, including Stanford University in the United States. Since 2023, MOL has supported this survey every year by using car carriers traveling from Japan toward the Caribbean Sea.

The released loggerhead turtles are relatively large, aged two to four years, with carapace lengths of 40 to 60 cm and body weights of 10 to 20 kg. Even though they were raised in captivity, they have the ability to quickly adapt to the wild environment after release. Of the 28 turtles released in July last year, 21 are still trackable (Note 2). With El Niño said to have occurred this year for the first time in two years, attention is focused on how the released turtles will swim across the Pacific Ocean.

For the MOL Group, whose business activities take place at sea, initiatives to conserve the marine environment, including biodiversity, are an important mission for both the Group and future society. To fulfill this mission, the MOL Group supports scientific research that contributes to the conservation of marine ecosystems.

By leveraging its route network and transport capabilities, the MOL Group cooperates in surveys conducted in actual sea areas that would be difficult for research institutions to carry out on their own. Through these efforts, the MOL Group will contribute to clarifying the migration routes of loggerhead turtles, an endangered species, and ultimately to the accumulation of scientific knowledge for biodiversity conservation.

(Note 1) In the STRETCH project (Sea Turtle Research Experiment on the Thermal Corridor Hypothesis), a research project related to the "thermal corridor hypothesis," a total of 111 loggerhead turtles have been released from MOL car carriers sailing in the Pacific Ocean from 2023 through this latest release. The project investigates migration routes using positional information transmitted from devices attached to the turtles’ carapaces and conducts detailed analysis of marine environmental data, thereby contributing to effective conservation activities for loggerhead turtles, an endangered species.

(Note 2) Positional information on loggerhead turtles released since 2023 can be viewed on this website. The website also features scenes from onboard the vessel at the time of release.

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