Bonaire Turtle Tracking 2012

Data provider
BONAIRE TURTLE TRACKING PROGRAM
Originating data center
Satellite Tracking and Analysis Tool (STAT)
Project sponsor or sponsor description
Valley Foundation

Anneke Nests at Playa Chikitu, Leaves with Transmitter

Just after sunset on Sunday night, a massive sea turtle weighing approximately 150 kilograms slowly emerged from the sea and crawled up the beach at Playa Chikitu, Washington Slagbaai National Park. This sea turtle, a Green species, took several hours to find her spot, dig a nest, and lay her fourth clutch of the season.

Before returning to the water, Sea Turtle Conservation Bonaire (STCB) staff and volunteers intercepted the turtle, named Anneke, and constrained her in a special wooden box where flipper tags and a satellite transmitter were successfully attached following standard protocols. Anneke was released at midnight and smoothly departed into the sea.

Throughout their adult lives sea turtles migrate between two homes: their foraging grounds and breeding grounds. This navigational acheivement is extraordinary considering the large distance between many turtles “two homesâ€. For female turtles this often means returning and crawling the same beach where they themselves hatched decades earlier.

Anneke’s home foraging grounds are currently unknown, but should soon be discovered by tracking her migration route. Identifying these routes and Bonaire’s turtles home foraging grounds provides valuable information to help protect these endangered species.

This year STCB invites everyone on Bonaire to follow Anneke on her journey and have launched the Great Migration Game. Make one of the closest predictions of where Anneke is going and win a Blackberry with a year of service along with other cool prizes. To participate go to www.bonaireturtles.org, click on the Great Migration Game link and follow the instructions.

While sea turtles have a fairly regular nesting schedule, just like people, each turtle acts differently and with every turtle there are opportunities to learn the different nesting behaviors of these incredible animals.

Anneke, measuring an impressive one meter straight carapace length was unusual. She showed up on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night to check out the beach from the surf, but without crawling or nesting. Finally, Sunday, to the delight of the STCB team who had expected her on Friday based on her pattern of previous nests, Anneke crawled the beach and after four or five attempts to make her body pit she found the right spot to successfully deposit her clutch of approximately 100 eggs.

Because this was Anneke’s fourth nest of this season, she may soon leave for her home foraging grounds, but it is possible that she will return to lay a fifth nest before departing from her nesting area.

Anneke is the first and only turtle to be tracked from Bonaire during the 2012 nesting season and the fourth Green sea turtle ever fitted with a transmitter on Bonaire.

Tracking of this Green sea turtle is made possible by a full sponsorship provided by the Valley Foundation.

Sea Turtle Conservation Bonaire is a non-governmental research and conservation organization that has been protecting sea turtles since 1991, member of the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST) and a project partner of the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance (DCNA).
‘Our mission is to ensure the protection and recovery of the sea turtle populations throughout their range’

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Visit STAT's project page for additional information.

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.
Only minimum required attributes are visible and downloadable online. Other attributes may be obtained upon provider's permission.

Attributes in dataset

Attribute (table column)	Description
prognum	Program number
tag_id	PTT ID
lc	Location class
iq	Quality indicator
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
project_id	STAT Project ID
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