Turbo Pudding

AmblesteadThe real story

The real turtles that go home to the beach they came from

· The Turbo Pudding team · 4 min read

Amabel, a giant sage-green turtle with pale yellow freckles, a dark eye under a heavy lid and a pink blush, walks along a sandy beach from left to right; her shell of pale hexagon plates is crowded with a colorful town of orange roofs, teal water tanks, a striped lookout tower with flags and little houses, and a copper-brown scalloped rim runs around it; behind her lie a blue sea with white wave marks, a rock sticking out of the water, two pink hills and a huge pale sun in a peach sky, with seashells, a red starfish and a gull dotted around

Early in Amblestead, on a ridge in Mist Valley, Pim the pangolin scrubs the grey crust off a path along Amabel’s shell. The giant turtle, freshly awake after a hundred years of sleep, says something she has clearly been thinking about: “I WAS WALKING SOMEWHERE ONCE.” Pim asks where. “THE SHORE WHERE I HATCHED.” From then on, every level you finish ends the same way: Amabel takes a few more steps toward the shore.

It’s Thursday, so here’s the real story. Going back to the beach you came from sounds like something only a storybook turtle would do. Real sea turtles do it all the time.

Home, decades later

Take the loggerhead, a sea turtle that grows 2.5 to 3.5 feet long and weighs 200 to 350 pounds. According to NOAA, the US agency that looks after ocean wildlife, female loggerheads reach adulthood at about 35 years old. When they’re ready to lay eggs, they usually come back to a beach in the general area where they hatched decades earlier.

Think about what that means. A tiny hatchling crawls into the sea, spends decades out in the ocean, and then finds her way back to roughly the same stretch of sand. After that, she keeps coming back to breed every two to three years.

Mist Valley in a soft lilac light: Amabel, a giant sage-green turtle with a round head, a dark eye and a small smile, stands on four thick legs while a speech bubble says “THAT TICKLES.”; her shell is a dome of grey hexagon plates with a copper-brown rim, and on the pale green plates at the top sit a yellow cottage with an orange roof, a red plank bridge, a lookout tower on wooden legs with a teal cabin and an orange flag, Mayor Barty the snail in a black top hat, Pim the pangolin, a mole with goggles, two small birds and a couple of grey lichen-covered stones; lilac hills, small clouds and a pale sun fill the background
Searched “relaxing puzzle game.” Found one that says it tickles.

A map made of magnets

How does a turtle find one beach after decades at sea? Scientists think part of the answer is Earth’s magnetic field. Every stretch of coastline has its own magnetic signature, a slightly different strength and angle of the field. The idea is that a hatchling remembers the signature of its home beach and follows it back as an adult.

In 2015, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill tested this with 19 years of nesting records from the biggest loggerhead nesting area in North America. Earth’s magnetic field drifts a little over the years. Where the signatures of neighboring beaches drifted closer together, more turtles nested. Where they drifted apart, fewer did. That’s exactly what you’d expect if turtles were steering by a magnetic memory.

The researchers are careful about it: the imprinting on a home beach hasn’t been watched directly, and nobody yet knows exactly how turtles sense the magnetic field. But it’s the strongest clue so far.

Busy nights on the sand

Loggerheads nest alone and at night. A female crawls up the beach after dark, digs a nest, lays about 100 eggs, covers them and goes back to the sea. In one season she can do this three to five times, about two weeks apart.

Not every sea turtle is that private. Kemp’s ridley, the smallest sea turtle in the world, at about 2 feet long and 70 to 100 pounds, comes ashore in big groups called arribadas, Spanish for “arrival.” It’s also the only sea turtle that routinely nests in the daytime. About 95 percent of all Kemp’s ridley nesting happens in one Mexican state, Tamaulipas, on beaches like Rancho Nuevo.

Night on the Aurora Plain: Amabel, a giant sage-green turtle with yellow freckles, a big dark eye under a heavy lid and a pink blush, walks to the right under green ribbons of aurora, a sky full of stars and a pale full moon; her shell is packed with a busy town lit up in the dark, with a lookout tower and flag, a teal horn, a striped tent, a beaver in a waistcoat, a white rabbit next to a sign that reads “Chime frame,” Mayor Barty the snail, Pim the pangolin, a mole with goggles and lots of small birds and mice; little glowing lamps and mushrooms dot the purple plain below her feet
Typed “cozy night game.” Turns out the whole town stays up late.

The warm sand decides

The eggs incubate in the warm sand for about two months. The sand does more than keep them cozy. In loggerheads, the temperature of the nest decides whether each hatchling becomes a male or a female: cooler sand makes more males, warmer sand makes more females.

When the babies hatch, they don’t rush out at once. Florida’s wildlife agency explains that they wait under the sand until it cools down, which is why most of them come out at night. Then they head for the brightest direction. On a natural beach, that’s the open sky over the water, and they turn away from dark shapes like dunes and plants.

That’s also why people on nesting beaches are asked to switch off lights the turtles can see. A bright window or streetlamp can pull hatchlings the wrong way, inland instead of down to the sea, and every extra minute of crawling uses up their small store of energy.

What we made up

Real sea turtles swim their way home with flippers and come ashore only to nest. Amabel walks the whole road on four thick legs, through Mist Valley, the Red Canyon, the Snow Pass, the Glass Desert and the Aurora Plain, before she ever reaches Sunrise Shore. No turtle naps for a century in the middle of the trip, and none carries a town. The pull of the beach where she hatched, though, is real.

A picture card of Sunrise Shore: a huge pale sun with short rays rises between two dotted pink hills over a calm blue sea with white wave marks, two brown rocks stick out of the water, and a strip of golden sand runs along the front with tufts of beach grass, scallop shells and a small red starfish, all under a peach sky with thin lilac clouds
Search history: “turtle beach puzzle.” The beach is the finish line.

Walk with Amabel

Chapter 1, Mist Valley, is free to play in your browser at amblestead.com. The full game, all six chapters on the road to the shore, is $4.99, paid once. More about the game is on the Amblestead page.

More about Amblestead

AmblesteadThe real story

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