How Sea Turtles Record History

A heat dome consisting of a high-pressure system moved slowly across the West, and the temperatures were expected to accelerate the snowmelt that serves as a water reservoir for the region. The snowpack this year in the Upper Colorado River Basin is about 60 percent of normal, with Colorado and Utah having their lowest amount on record. 

The outlook for runoff into Lake Powell on the Colorado River was predicted to be worse than it had been forecast just earlier this month. The country’s second-largest reservoir was predicted to receive only 27 percent of its yearly average and could be in jeopardy of not being able to generate electricity. Aspen Public Radio reports that snowmelt usually begins in the middle of April but it’s already happening in much of the Colorado Basin. A good sign is that most of the water will make it to rivers and streams because soils are still wet from rain last fall.

A report from the World Weather Attribution organization concludes that the record-shattering March temperatures in the West would have been “virtually impossible without human-induced climate change.” The group of scientists from around the world estimate that the western regional heat waves are about four degrees Celsius warmer than they otherwise would have been without climate change.

Last week, American Airlines and Google announced that they had found a way to significantly reduce the effect of contrails by using an AI tool to forecast altitudes where they would develop during flights. Using a Google tool, the airline allowed its pilots to adjust altitudes or pick alternative routes to avoid areas where contrails would likely form.

On 2,400 flights between the U.S. and Europe—an area prone to forming contrails—half of the flights served as a control group, and the other half were given options to avoid conditions leading to contrails. About 110 flights flew on the optional course, and researchers observed that there was more than a 60 percent reduction in formation of the clouds compared to the other flights—and with no significant difference in fuel consumption. A representative of the airline told the Associated Press that the tests showed it wasn’t difficult for dispatchers and pilots to fly alternative routes to avoid forming contrails.

L-DOPA, or Levodopa as it’s known to patients, is the gold-standard medication used to alleviate symptoms, but creating L-DOPA relies on fossil fuels and generates significant waste. Also, Parkinson’s cases are increasing with aging populations and manufacturing supply chains have hit snags.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh are solving that bottleneck with bottles—plastic bottles that is. They’ve made L-DOPA from PET plastic using another environmental hazard: E. coli bacteria.

E. coli bacteria are found in tainted water or food and can cause infections that result in diarrhea, vomiting, and fever. PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic is used in a range of products from food packaging to shampoo bottles and clothing. The often single-use plastic is made from oil and gas and is contributing to the global plastic pollution crisis, with some 50 million tonnes produced annually.

The team broke down the plastic into terephthalic acid that was then fed to engineered E. coli bacteria, which ultimately synthesized the L-DOPA. It’s an example in the growing field of “bio-upcycling” where, in this case, the valuable carbon in plastic is repurposed into medicine. The plastic waste would have otherwise contaminated waterways or gone to landfills where it would leach toxins into soils and groundwater.

This isn’t the first time researchers from the University of Edinburgh have converted PET into medicine. As H2O Radio reported in June 2025, they used E. coli to convert the plastic into acetaminophen aka Tylenol. Using a fermentation process similar to brewing beer, they were able to make the drug in under 24 hours, at room temperature, and with virtually no carbon emissions.

The study was published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

A new study led by the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science shows that scutes, the hard plates that make up a turtle’s shell, grow continuously and preserve chemical signals of marine conditions over time. 

By analyzing shell layers, scientists can determine where turtles foraged, their diets, and how marine stress events might have affected them. Sea turtle scutes are made of keratin—the same material found in human hair and nails—and each layer remains unchanged once it develops, behaving like tree rings that preserve the history of environmental conditions. 

The team used radiocarbon dating to analyze layers from 24 stranded sea turtles—loggerheads (Caretta caretta) and green turtles (Chelonia mydas)—collected along the Florida coast between 2019 and 2022. Each layer was radiocarbon dated and compared with the mid-20th-century “bomb pulse,” a spike in carbon released during nuclear weapons testing that serves as an environmental tracer of carbon in the marine environment. 

In many of the turtles, they identified periods when growth slowed simultaneously. Several of those slowdowns coincided with major marine disruptions in Florida’s waters when food was hard to find, such as during harmful algal blooms known as “red tides” and large Sargassum seaweed events.

Sea turtles live long lives and spend much of their time in the open ocean, so studying them is often difficult. This new research shows that the animals carry a history book on their backs that can tell us not only how well they’ve survived past events but also what’s needed to protect them in the future.

The study was published in the journal Marine Biology.