CNMI Sea Turtle Program satellite tracked green turtles 2011

Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Sea Turtle Program

Sea turtles are cultural ambassadors, connecting people and nations of the Pacific. This collaborative satellite tagging project has not only increased our understanding of CNMI sea turtle biology and migration and engaged local communities and conservation partners, but has also stretched across ocean basins connecting the Pacific Islands with the IOSEA.

During the summer of 2011, three satellite tags were deployed on post-nesting green turtles in Saipan. Goals of this effort were to integrate sea turtles in educational activities, acquire greater understanding of their biology and ecology, and promote greater community awareness of conservation needs and migrations. These are CNMI's first post-nesting satellite tagged turtles, resulting from a collaborative project of CNMI Department of Lands and Natural Resources (DLNR) -- Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW), the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) -- Pacific Islands Regional Office (PIRO) and Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), and local community volunteer organizations.

This dataset was supplied to the CNMI DLNR-DFW with the help of George Balazs and Denise Parker of NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.

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 (created by OBIS-SEAMAP)
tag_id	Tag ID
datetime	Original date and time of location
obs_date	Date of observation
obs_time	Time of observation
obs_count	Number of animals
sp_tsn	Species ITIS TSN
sp_obs	Species observed
latitude	Latitude of observation
longitude	Longitude of observation
lc	Location class
sex	Sex of animal
age_class	Age class of animal (adult or juvenile)
body_size	Straight carapace length (cm)
country	Country where sea turtle was tagged
beach	Nesting beach where sea turtle was tagged
notes	Notes
cite1	Citation