Gulf Green Turtle Project 2016-2019

Nicolas Pilcher, Marine Research Foundation

Marine turtles are integral components of the Arabian region marine ecosystems, and a priority conservation component of national and regional conservation programmes. Sea turtles are protected in all countries bordering the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and are a priority species in Emirates Nature-WWF's Strategy 2015-2020, as well as WWF’s Global Marine Turtle Strategy 2012-2020 (WWF, 2012).

Turtles are in danger from accidental bycatch of juveniles and adults in fishing operations, marine habitat alteration and degradation, exploitation of eggs, loss of nesting beaches, and potentially through rising temperatures with climate change. Younger turtles are also impacted by cold-stunning events during winter months.

A small number of protected areas exist which encompass certain life stages of sea turtles in the Gulf region, but these are spatially-limited given the state of knowledge on turtle habitat use - we have little information on where green turtles migrate to following nesting areas, and where key foraging and development grounds are found.

The Gulf Green Turtle Project will allow us to decipher the migration paths of green sea turtles, as these comprise the most abundant turtle species in the inner Gulf region and the second most abundant in Oman, and will identify linkages between foraging and nesting populations within the important Gulf biogeographic region, allowing us to guide conservation actions and raise awareness of the importance of marine turtle populations.

Data resulting from this work will inform managers of critical in–water habitats utilised by Arabian turtles, and allow them to aim concerted conservation activities, including fishery regulation where applicable, to preserve turtles through all phases of their live cycle.

N/A

[2023-01-27] Additional 48 tags were appended.

This project is implemented by Emirates Nature - WWF, formerly known as Emirates Wildlife Society-WWF, with scientific advice from the Marine Research Foundation (MRF).

The data is also available at the STAT web site (http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?project_id=1199) but this version is different as the data shared with OBIS-SEAMAP was filtered by the provider.

Overview

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 described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
All attributes are included in the downloadable file (CSV or ESRI File Geodatabase) for "Complete Set of Dataset".

Attributes in dataset

Attribute (table column)	Description
oid	Unique ID number (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)
uid	Unique ID
tag	Tag ID
datetime	Date/time of the location at UTC
lc	Location control
lat1	Latitude in decimal degrees
lon1	Longitude in decimal degrees
species	Species name
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
obs_count	Number of animal. Always 1
tag_location	Tag location (BT: Bu Tinah; RAK: ...)
sex	Sex
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP