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The estuarine crocodile is a bad swimmer. So how has it managed to colonize northern Australia, eastern India, part of southeast Asia and multiple South-east Pacific islands separated by enormous swaths of ocean?

Easy, a team of researchers in Australia has found. They surf.

Using acoustic telemetry and satellite positioning or tagged crocodiles, the researchers found that both male and female crocodiles regularly traveled more than 30 miles by 'surfing' river and ocean currents. They always began their voyages within an hour of the river's tides changing, so they could take advantage of the current. When the tide turned against them they pulled up onto the riverbank to wait for the next day's tide.

They also analyzed data showing that one satellite-tagged crocodile traveled 360 miles over 25 days. A second male, went 255 miles in 20 days.

The paper is in this month's edition of the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology.

The estuarine crocodile is the world's largest living reptile. Males can weigh up to 2,900 pounds and reach up to 20 feet long. Crocodylus porosus lives mostly in rivers, mangrove swamps and estuaries and cannot survive long-term away from land, where it gets its food and water.

The researchers speculate that the crocodile used their ability to surf the ocean currents to fan out throughout the South-East Pacific. Populations of the giant reptiles are found in East India, Sri Lanka, Southern China, Thailand, the Philippine and Sunda islands (including Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, and Timor), to northern Australia, Vanuatu, Fiji and the Solomon islands.

There are anecdotal reports of sailors sighting these crocodiles far out to sea, but no one had previously tracked their long-term movements and showed that they used the currents to move themselves quickly between far distant habitats.

The research also helps explain why the various far-flung populations of the crocodiles haven't evolved into separate species, despite the distances between them. They appear to travel frequently enough to maintain a unified genetic profile.

The research was led by Hamish Campbell of the University of Queensland and colleagues from Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and Australia Zoo. They tagged 27 adult estuarine crocodiles with sonar transmitters and underwater receivers. The late Steve Irwin, known to many Americans as "The Crocodile Hunter," was a part of the team that undertook the research, which tracked the crocodiles movements for a year in the remote Kennedy River in North Queensland, Australia.

By Elizabeth Weise

 

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/06/giant-crocodiles-use-ocean-currents-to-surf-to-far-flung-habitats/1#.UCfCPKC8F8E

A relative low mobile concept like a seastead, a floating aquaculture unit, or a floating habitat can use ocean currents to move over enormous distances just the same way. This was applied by Ben Franklin which took a propulsion less drift dive over the atlantic ocean in the gulf stream. (40 days).

It was also adopted as mobility concept by Sea Orbiter.

Countless cases of wreckage crossing oceans, habitat distribution of bad swimmers like crocodiles and sea turtles make a compelling case for this concept.

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