{"id":570471,"date":"2026-07-27T13:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/570471\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T13:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:57:10","slug":"something-id-never-even-heard-rumours-of-sea-turtle-emerges-from-water-with-strange-creature-clinging-to-its-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/570471\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSomething I\u2019d never even heard rumours of.” Sea turtle emerges from water with strange creature clinging to its back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists in\u00a0Costa Rica\u00a0were astounded when an\u00a0olive ridley\u00a0sea turtle came onto land to nest, carrying a hitchhiker with it. A\u00a0remora\u00a0had stuck fast onto the turtle\u2019s shell and survived for nearly 20 minutes out of the water.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rarely seen behaviour has been described in a new study in\u00a0Frontiers in Marine Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also known as suckerfish, remoras<\/a> are the hitchhikers of the sea. They save energy by catching a free ride, attaching themselves to larger animals, including\u00a0turtles,\u00a0<\/a>rays<\/a>,\u00a0sharks\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0whales<\/a>\u00a0using a suction disk on the top of their heads. They\u2019ve even been known to stick onto scuba divers\u2019 tanks.<\/p>\n

Researchers were monitoring nesting turtles in Pejeperro beach, Costa Rica<\/a>, in September\u00a02025 when they realised a female had left the water with a hanger-on gripping onto her shell. Although the turtle had left the water, the suckerfish was still holding on tight.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy coworkers and I were certainly surprised and slightly bewildered that [the remora] was still attached and breathing,\u201d says the study\u2019s author Megan Bullock of the\u00a0University of West Florida<\/a>\u00a0and the conservation project Comunidad Protectora de Tortugas de Osa (COPROT<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The suckerfish was glued onto the turtle\u2019s shell and out of the water for a staggering 19 minutes. According to the study, \u201cduring the 19 minutes of observation, the remora remained relatively still except for periodically flexing its opercula\u201d (gill coverings).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"OliveA nesting olive ridley sea turtle on Playa Pejeperro in Costa Rica with a common remora attached to its shell. The remora is alive and has remained attached to the turtle even after it left the water and began the nesting process. This persistence of attachment behaviour on land suggests an intimate and longer-term symbiotic relationship between the remora and the turtle which the team explored in the study. Credit: Megan Bullock<\/p>\n

When the researchers needed to measure the turtle\u2019s carapace (shell), they removed the fish and plopped it back in the water. \u201cThe remora began to writhe and quickly moved away from the researcher once it was returned to the ocean,\u201d write the authors in the study, \u201cindicating that it was still alive despite being removed from the water for an extensive period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surviving for so long out of the water is no mean feat. \u201c19 minutes is certainly a long time for most fish to be out of the water so I was definitely surprised,\u201d says Bullock, who collaborated with COPROT\u2019s Vicente Pe\u00f1a Eisele\u00a0and the University of Miami\u2019s\u00a0Emily Yeager<\/a>\u00a0on the study.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil I connected with Emily and began researching this topic, I\u2019d never heard of remoras leaving the water with their host, much less seemingly by its own choice,\u201d says Bullock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019d never heard of remoras leaving the water with their host, much less seemingly by its own choice.<\/p>\n

And not only did the remora survive but it was still seemingly full of beans after almost 20 minutes on land. \u201cI was even more so surprised that the remora was still so energetic when we removed it from the turtle,\u201d she says. \u201cIt thrashed a lot for an animal that hadn’t been in the water for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although remoras are commonly seen stuck onto turtles\u2019 shells in the water, the researchers think it\u2019s rare for them to leave the sea with their hosts. \u201cThe lack of accounts of remoras exiting the water with them, despite the hundreds of thousands of sea turtles that nest each year, makes it quite unusual,\u201d says Bullock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just because she hasn\u2019t seen it personally \u2013 in her research, she\u2019s only come across a handful of scientific papers describing something similar, and none of her colleagues on the turtle nesting project had ever seen anything like this. \u201cYou get to hear about a lot of the strange things that your coworkers encounter,\u201d she says, \u201cand yet this was something I\u2019d never even heard rumours of.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

How did the fish survive above the waves for so long? \u201cWe\u2019re honestly not too sure,\u201d says Bullock. \u201cLike most fish, remoras need flowing water over their gills and will suffocate without it over time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She wonders whether the suckerfish are better able to survive without oxygen than other species and hopes further research might help to answer this question.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Getting to the bottom of the mysterious relationship between remoras and their hosts helps marine researchers better understand the complex lives of these animals and how different species interact with each other, says Bullock: \u201cThis, in turn, can help us better protect them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Top image credit: Olive ridley sea turtle with remora clinging to shell<\/p>\n

More wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists in\u00a0Costa Rica\u00a0were astounded when an\u00a0olive ridley\u00a0sea turtle came onto land to nest, carrying a hitchhiker with it.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,82],"class_list":["post-570471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}