Studying the animals that hitch rides on the back of sea turtles
Dr. Nathan Robinson was part of a sea turtle research team when the team discovered that one of the sea turtles had a straw stuck up its nose. The entire ordeal was recorded and the video went viral on YouTube and contributed to the global ban the plastic straw campaign. The virality of the video changed Nathan's future career as he now focuses on how video can help identify deep-sea creatures and study the behaviour of oceanic animals.
However, the one thing that doesn't get talked about enough was Nathan's study topic during the research expedition where the viral video was recorded.
Nathan was studying the animals that would settle and hitch rides on the backs of sea turtles, called epibionts. He continued to study epibionts for the past ten years and recently created a database of studies and information on epibionts from all over the world.
Nathan recently published a paper on the database and the questions that it answered. He sat down with me to discuss those answers and where he would like the epibiont database to lead other researchers in the future.
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