Reeves the turtle paddles 500km for taste of home

Researcher Dan Godoy watches as Reeves is released in Parengarenga Harbour.

Reeves just wanted to come home.

For nearly a year, the green turtle found stranded at Muriwai Beach was fed a diet of squid, mussels and fish while recovering at Auckland's Kelly Tarlton's Underworld World.

The good life must have been hard to give up. When he was released back into the wild at Parengarenga Harbour in the Far North on March 1, Reeves decided to make the 500km journey back to Auckland.

Yesterday, the satellite tag that researcher Dan Godoy put on the turtle's shell traced him to the Waitemata Harbour, just 500m from Kelly Tarlton's.

But the juvenile turtle's journey is still considered "cruisy", said Mr Godoy; adults are known to travel 2000km between foraging and breeding sites.

Mr Godoy is tracking turtles as part of his PhD at Auckland University of Technology, hoping to build up a better understanding of the endangered creatures - of which little is known.

Sick turtles are rehabilitated at Kelly Tarlton's, and released the following summer in New Zealand's northernmost waters.

"We never knew what happened to them. We didn't know whether they survived, migrated back to the tropics, or whether they stayed in New Zealand," said Mr Godoy.

Reeves was one of the first to have a $3500 tag attached to his shell, enabling researchers to track his movements. For the first few weeks after being released, Reeves - named after the actor Christopher Reeve for his battler spirit - could be seen slowly making his way south.

By Tuesday night, the tag placed the 22kg "big boy" off Takapuna Beach.

Overseas research has shown that turtles can detect changes in the earth's magnetic field, enabling them to form a mental map by which they navigate. Mr Godoy believed the time Reeves spent recuperating at Kelly Tarlton's left an imprint in his mind. When he was released in the Far North, he returned to the marine centre, believing it to be home.

Mr Godoy said Reeves' return has implications for turtle rehabilitation. None of the world's seven turtle species - all endangered or critical - are known to make New Zealand waters home.

"Historically, those that end up here are stragglers. They are those that become disoriented doing a migration."

But there is anecdotal data that a population of greens may have established here, he said.

He is trying to build up a genetic database of marine turtles here, as part of a South Pacific turtle conservation programme.

www.sealab.co.nz