The Sulu Sulawesi Seascape supports five of the world’s seven species of sea turtles – the green, hawksbill, loggerhead, olive ridley and leatherback. Of these, the green and hawksbill are by far the more abundant, with significant nesting and foraging assemblages. The leatherback was known as a transient feeder, the olive ridley is an occasional…
Over the last few decades, various institutions throughout the Asia-Pacific and the Pacific Islands region have been tagging turtles and collecting a variety of data. While these efforts have generated large volumes of information, there has been little overall coordination of the work. In 2002, based on recommendations from participants who attended the Western Pacific…
Turtles are an important component of marine ecosystems, they offer benefits far beyond the tangible, and thus their conservation is a public process, not that of a handful of dedicated individuals. Effective conservation thus requires a widespread awareness campaign, coupled with programmes which provide alternative livelihoods to those affected by conservation activities, supported by quality…
The general life-cycle of marine turtles is similar among species, but even given the amount of knowledge we presently have about sea turtles, there are some crucial gaps that have the potential to undermine management efforts. Among these is the knowledge of how many turtles join the breeding population in any given year, the period between onshore migration of juveniles to adulthood, and natural sex ratios in the wild. Lack of a clear understanding of any of these can have an effect on how turtle population data is interpreted and how this results in conservation action
The Marine Research Foundation assisted WWF Vietnam to implement sea turtle management training at Con Dao Island, working with trainees from Con Dao National Park and other staff trainees from Ninh Thuan and Quang Tri provinces, in addition to national government officials, to build their capacity to effectively implement a systematic sea turtle monitoring,…
