Art of Science: Life Before it Hatches

Researchers get an intimate view inside fragile sea turtle eggs before they hatch that is essential to their research but also artistically beautiful.

For Gabby Carvajal, a doctoral researcher, FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, each glimpse inside such illuminated embryos serves as a step forward in solving a critical puzzle: how to determine a hatchling’s sex quickly and humanely.

She recently submitted a photograph of this research to FAU’s Art of Science photography contest, that earned second place. The image, called Sea Turtle Beginning, showed a late-stage sea turtle embryo silhouetted in its egg. Its flipper fully formed and its blood vessels dramatically illuminated. The image, both elegant and intimate, highlights a developmental stage few people ever see, she said.

“For me, it’s like having a window into this tiny world,” Carvajal said. “You see this network of extra-embryonic blood vessels – something most people don’t even know exists. It’s a moment where science reveals something truly beautiful.”

Beyond the art of the scientific process, Carvajal, who studies with Jeanette Wyneken, Ph.D., professor of biological science is leading a project to accurately and quickly determine the sex of sea turtle hatchlings without harming them. For a species whose sex is determined by nest temperature rather than chromosomes, climate change is creating an imbalance for sea turtles, she said.

“As temperatures continue to rise, and rise quickly, nests are producing far more females than males as turtles have environmentally determined sex.,” Carvajal said. “Some years on Boca Raton beaches, we don’t see a single male in our samples. That’s not sustainable long-term, as not producing enough male turtles will eventually push populations towards decline then extinction.”

The current methods for determining a hatchling’s sex are limited. One method is dissection, and the other requires raising a hatchling for months until it’s large enough for laparoscopic sex identification, which is a technique so specialized that only a handful of experts worldwide, including Wyneken, can perform it.

“There’s no easy, accurate, field-friendly way to do this. So, we’re trying to change that,” said Carvajal, whose winning Art of Science photograph offers a rare glimpse into an unseen stage of turtle development and highlights the care and precision behind conservation research of an at-risk species. “New molecular tools, reference genomes and global collaborations move the field closer to accessible and accurate kits for sexing hatchlings in the field – an essential step for managing sea turtle populations in an increasingly warming world.”