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Sea turtle nests are targeted by poachers, but they have a new obstacle to getting away with the goods:聽3D-printed decoy eggs with GPS trackers, called InvestEggator. These can track eggs that have been illegally removed and could help identify the chain involved in their illegal trade.

The decoy eggs, about the size of a ping-pong ball, were developed by conservation organisation Paso Pacifico in Nicaragua as a means to fight wildlife poaching. Helen Pheasey at the University of Kent in the UK and her colleague then used them to follow the trafficking of sea turtle eggs in Costa Rica.

鈥淲hat we want to be able to do with these eggs is use them as a law enforcement tool and have that data admissible in court,鈥� says Pheasey.

The fake eggs resemble turtle eggs in size and shape and contain a GPS transmitter, SIM card, charging ports and a battery pack.

The team placed a decoy egg into 101 turtle nests on four beaches in Costa Rica. This didn鈥檛 affect the hatching success of the other eggs.

A quarter of the fakes were taken, and the team was able to track five of them via location signals sent every hour. These eggs were taken from two green sea turtle nests and three Olive Ridley sea turtle nests.

Most of the eggs stayed in the local region, but the decoy taken furthest identified a trade chain. The egg was taken 137 kilometres inland over two days, to a supermarket loading bay and then to a residential property.

The tracking reinforced anecdotal evidence that eggs are sold door to door, both in coastal and inland Costa Rica, says Pheasey. In parts of Central America, turtle eggs are consumed as a delicacy.

The researchers also received reports of poachers realising the tracker eggs were fake. One decoy stopped sending signals 43 kilometres from the beach it originated from, and the team later received photographs of the dissected device.

Limited signal reception along the Caribbean coast was an issue, but the researchers believe this will improve as local infrastructure develops.