Turtle Awareness and Protection Studies (TAPS)

2008 Research Update

March 2008

In March, both Stephen Dunbar and graduate student, Melissa Berube, returned to Roatan for three weeks to continue research efforts on juvenile hawksbills in that area. The purpose of the short visit was to trial some different technology than what they had previously been using. Instead of attaching radio transmitters directly to the turtles - a technique that resulted in good, but limited data – they began studying the use of GPS data loggers in tracking the movements of the young turtles. The advantage of the GPS loggers is that they’re able to be programmed to collect a location point as often as desired; from seconds to hours. So, the loggers allow an almost constant tracking of the animal’s movements. There are a few challenges with this system, however. The data loggers are not waterproof, so they can’t be directly attached to the turtles and submerged. Another is that to fix a position, they need to be in sight of satellites, which can’t be done underwater, so they must stay at the surface. Both these challenges can be met by designing a buoy system that keeps the data logger at the surface. But this means the system must be tethered to the turtle, creating another series of challenges when dealing with turtles that live among shallow coral reefs.

During March we trialed the system we’ve developed on two turtles. The first turtle was“Chip,”a xx- kg Hawksbill. After releasing this turtle with the buoy system attached, we let the animal travel for about an hour then,relocated the buoy system via the radio transmitter coupled to the data logger. It was exciting to be able to locate the system easily and quickly, but when we retrieved the buoy, the turtle had broken free of the tether. It was obvious that the line holding the breakaway loops to the turtle had been severed, since some of the loops of the breakaway were still in tact. That meant we needed to redesign the line on the turtle to withstand more pull.

After a couple days, we were ready for a second trial. Our concern now was that the only turtle available might be too small to pull the system we’d designed. When we released the second trial turtle, we kept a close eye on it to see how it would fair with the system attached. Our concerns about the body to buoy weight ratio were correct and we eventually released the small turtle from the system, with the aim of going back to the drawing board to redesign a smaller, lighter system than we were able to construct on the island.

July 2008

July saw the return of the research team to the Bay Islands with an improved and smaller buoy system than in March, ready to be deployed. There was still the need to use the system on larger,rather tan smaller, juveniles, since the system still weighed in at about 0.45 kg. Although we trialed the new system on an available turtle, we again found this animal too small for the system.

In the meantime, both Dunbar and Berube were engaged in speaking appointments with elementary and high schools around Roatan. The presentations were designed to increase awareness of sea turtles around the Bay Islands and also to introduce the new conservation initiative designed by ProTECTOR and supported by a State of the World’s Sea Turtles (SWOT) Outreach Grant. The initiative, called the “Nesting Turtle Hotline,” is a 24/7 hotline number that anyone can call when they see a turtle nesting, stranded, or injured on the beach. A trained response team will then attend to the turtle. We’ve developed a competition that involves the children of the schools on Roatan, ages 6 – 16, to promote the program and publicize the hotline number. The idea is to engage the children by getting them involved in this first step toward sea turtle conservation. Hopefully, many of them will influence their family and friends to recognize that “Turtles are our friends…”