Sea Sense satellite tracked green sea turtles from Tanzania 2012 under SWIOFP
Sea Sense

Sea Sense
Institut Français pour L'Exploitation de la Mer
Kélonia

Satellite tags were deployed on three nesting green turtles (Chelonia mydas) between March and July 2012 to address data gaps concerning the spatial dynamics of green turtle nesting populations in Tanzania. Tags were deployed in Temeke District which supports one of the largest green turtle rookeries in Tanzania.

Tag durations ranged from 24 to 36 days. All three individuals went on to lay further clutches of eggs after tag deployment which provided valuable data on inter-nesting behaviour. Two individuals spent their inter-nesting periods at the same location, 30km south of the nesting grounds.

Two of the tags failed before post-nesting migrations commenced. One of the turtles was tracked during a post nesting migration to a foraging ground on the north-west coast of Pemba Island (Tanzania).

This was the first sea turtle satellite telemetry project ever to be carried out in Tanzania and has confirmed the location of an important foraging ground in Pemba Island and a site utilised by gravid females during inter-nesting periods.

The purpose of the satellite tracking project under SWIOFP was to facilitate the development of effective and sustainable management recommendations for protecting sea turtles at foraging and nesting sites and during migratory periods.

In Tanzania specifically, little is understood about the spatial dynamics of sea turtles which periodically move hundreds of kilometres between feeding grounds and nesting sites. There is a paucity of data concerning the location of important foraging habitats and migratory corridors and the true extent of fisheries interactions during various stages of the turtle life cycle. Lack of basic data is proving to be a major obstacle to the development and implementation of specific conservation and management actions in the wider western Indian Ocean region.

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Overview

Attributes described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
Only minimum required attributes are visible and downlodable online. Other attributes may be obtained upon provider's permission unless otherwise noted below.

This section explains attributes included in the original dataset. OBIS-SEAMAP restricts the attributes available to the public to date/time, lat/lon and species names/counts only. Should you need other attributes described here, you are encouraged to contact the data provider.

Attributes in dataset provided

Attribute (table column)	Description
oid	Unique ID number (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
tag_id	Tag ID
obs_datetime	Date and time of observation in local time calculated by OBIS-SEAMAP
datetime_utc	Date and time of observation in UTC
lc	Location class
time_zone	Time zone of the datetime_utc values (always UTC)
obs_count	Number of animals (always 1)
age_class	Age (always Adult)
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
sp_obs	Species name recorded
provider	Data provider
owner	Data owner
tagging_lat	Latitude of tagging location
tagging_lon	Longitude of tagging location
country	Country
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP