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Marine Turtle Newsletter 101:27, © 2003
Second Record of a Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Tagged in Brazil and Captured in Nicaragua
Eduardo H.S.M. Lima1, Cynthia J. Lagueux2, Paulo C. R. Barata3 & Maria. Â. Marcovaldi4
1Fundação Pró-TAMAR, Caixa Postal 01, Almofala - CE, 62592-990 Brazil (E-mail: tamarce@tamar.org.br)
2Wildlife Conservation Society, 2300 Southern Blvd., Bronx, NY 10460 USA (E-mail: clagueux@wcs.org)
3Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rua Leopoldo Bulhões 1480, Rio de Janeiro - RJ, 21041-210 Brazil
(E-mail: pbarata@alternex.com.br) 4 Fundação Pró-TAMAR, Caixa Postal 2219, Rio Vermelho, Salvador, BA, 40210-970 Brazil (E-mail: neca@tamar.org.br)
A green turtle (Chelonia mydas) bearing flipper tag BR7440 from the TAMAR Brazilian sea turtle project was captured in a turtle net off the central Caribbean coast of Nicaragua in late 2001. The turtle was originally double flipper tagged with monel tags and released on 8 June 1994, after incidental capture in a wooden fishing weir (“curral de pesca”) off Almofala Beach (2°50’S, 40°09’W), State of Ceará, Brazil. When originally tagged the turtle measured 98 cm curved carapace length (CCL, nuchal notch to posterior tip) and 88 cm maximum curved carapace width, and had several tumour like masses on the neck and all four flippers.
A legal green turtle fishery is conducted by several indigenous and ethnic groups in Nicaragua as a source of income and protein (Lagueux 1998). The turtle was captured by Donald Marti, a Miskitu fisher from the indigenous community of Walpa. Because Mr. Marti was not at home when one of us (CJL) visited the community we can only report that the turtle was captured in the general area of 13º01’N and 83º24’W and was dead by 16 December 2001, the date we received the tag from his wife.
The Almofala region is a foraging area for green turtles (Lima 2001) ranging in CCL from 27 to 132 cm, and there is an ongoing mark-recapture study in the area in collaboration with fishers. Tag recoveries both in and away from this site reveal some of the complexity of the interactions among different breeding populations. This is the second record of a green turtle tagged at Almofala, Brazil and subsequently captured off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua (Lima et al. 1999), and another green turtle tagged at Almofala was recovered in Trinidad (Lum et al. 1998). Green turtles tagged while nesting at Ascension Island and Suriname have been recovered in the Almofala region and elsewhere in northeastern Brazil (Carr 1975; Mortimer & Carr 1987; Pritchard 1973; Schulz 1975). Furthermore, a green turtle tagged in March 1999 on the nesting beach at Tortuguero, Costa Rica, and last seen on that beach in April 1999, was found dead in February 2001 in the municipality of Fortaleza, Ceará, about 200 km east of Almofala (Lima & Troëng 2001). Together these data suggest a link between green turtle populations of the western South Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.
Acknowledgements: We would like to thank; the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC) who compensate Nicaraguan turtlers for all tag recoveries received, including tags from non-CCC projects. The Nicaraguan turtlers for their cooperation in returning the tags and providing information about the turtles captured. Projeto TAMAR is co-managed by Fundação Pró-TAMAR and is officially sponsored by Petrobras. In Ceará, TAMAR is supported by the Frankfurt Zoological Society - Help for Threatened Wildlife.
CARR, A. F. 1975. The Ascension Island green turtle colony. Copeia 1975: 547-555.
Lagueux, C.J. 1998. Marine turtle fishery of Caribbean Nicaragua: human use patterns and harvest trends. Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA. 215 pp.
LIMA, E.H.S.M. 2001. Helping the people help the turtles: the work of Projeto TAMAR-IBAMA in Almofala, Brazil. Marine Turtle Newsletter 91:7-9.
Lima, E.H.S.M., C.J. Lagueux, D. Castro W. & M.Â. Marcovaldi. 1999. From one feeding ground to another: green turtle migration between Brazil and Nicaragua. Marine Turtle Newsletter 85:10.
Lima, E.H.S.M. & S. Troëng. 2001. Link between green turtles foraging in Brazil and nesting in Costa Rica? Marine Turtle Newsletter 94:9.
Lum, L.L., E.M. Lima & A. Santos. 1998. Green turtle tagged in Brazil recovered in Trinidad. Marine Turtle Newsletter 82:9.
Mortimer, J.A. & A. Carr. 1987. Reproduction and migrations of the Ascension Island green turtle (Chelonia mydas). Copeia 1987:103-113.
Pritchard, P.C.H. 1973. International migrations of South American sea turtles (Cheloniidae and Dermochelyidae). Animal Behaviour 21:18-27.
Schulz, J.P. 1975. Sea turtles nesting in Surinam. Zoologische Verhandelingen (Leiden) 143:3-172.