Buck Island Turtles
USGS

Data provider
USGS Greater Everglades Sea Turtles
Originating data center
Satellite Tracking and Analysis Tool (STAT)

Buck Island Reef National Monument (BIRNM), a marine protected area located in the US Virgin Islands, is a crucial nesting area for endangered hawksbills, green turtles, leatherback turtles, and loggerheads. Since the recent expansion of the USVI marine protected area at BIRNM, newly included areas have not yet been investigated for sea turtle habitat use. Thus, we are conducting a sea turtle tagging and tracking project to quantify real-time habitat-use of sea turtles within and around BIRNM.

We capture reproductive females on nesting beaches and perform a standard workup procedure on each one, including marking each turtle with internal PIT tags and taking standard measurements, blood samples, photographs, and a biopsy punch for isotope (diet) analysis. We are using these data sets to determine whether current BIRNM boundaries encompass habitats most preferred by sea turtles, determine connections between turtles at BIRNM and other protected areas, identify core areas of turtle use, and quantify time spent in and around BIRNM. Our research addresses specific Recovery Objectives outlined in the Federal Recovery Plans for multiple protected species. Our data can be used as the basis for future adaptive management of BIRNM boundaries and also assist in nesting beach surveys conducted by National Park Service (NPS). We received financial support from NPS and USGS, and substantial in-kind support from NPS, without which this project would not have been possible.

In a concurrent study, we deployed an array of 19 acoustic receivers within BIRNM to identify patterns of habitat use for nesting females and turtles captured in the water; an overarching goal of that project is to determine which areas of BIRNM turtles use most often. The NPS and other university colleagues (UMass, UVI) have initiated additional BIRNM acoustic tracking projects, which have substantially augmented and expanded our existing array of receivers to extend past BIRNM borders. We have been maintaining our receivers while collaborating with NPS and other colleagues to get the most out of the expanding array of receivers in the region. By doing so, we can identify core areas of use by all turtles (by species and life stage) and determine the amount of time spent within and outside of the BIRNM.

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Visit STAT's project page for additional information.

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
project_id	STAT Project ID
prognum	Program number
tag_id	PTT ID
datetime_utc	Date and time in UTC
lc	Location class
iq	Quality indicator
latitude	Latitude 1
longitude	Longitude 1
dir1	Dir 1
nb_mes	Number of messages received
big_nb_mes	definition not provided
best_level	Best signal strength in dB
pass_duration	Pass duration in seconds
nopc	Number Of Plausibility Checks successful (from 0-4)
calcul_freq	Calculated frequency
altitude	Altitude used for location calculation
sensors	Sensors
species	Species name
sp_tsn	ITIS Taxonomic Serial Number
lc_filter	Parameters to location filtering
speed_filter	Parameters to speed filtering
distance_filter	Parameters to distance filtering
topo_filter	Parameters to topo filtering
time_filter	Parameters to time filtering
angle_filter	Parameters to angle filtering
life_stage	Life stage of the animal
gender	Gender of the animal
wetdry	Wet or dry
wetdry_filter	Parameters to Wet or dry filterint
obs_datetime	Date and time (local time zone)
timezone_h	Time difference from UTC
obs_count	Animal count (always 1)