MTN 119:14-15 Green Turtle Tag Recovery Further Links Northern Brazil to the Caribbean Region

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Green Turtle Tag Recovery Further Links Northern Brazil to the Caribbean Region

Eduardo H.S.M. Lima¹, Maria Thereza D. Melo¹, Magnus M. Severo² & Paulo C.R. Barata³
¹Fundação Pró-TAMAR, Acesso Projeto TAMAR 151, Almofala - CE, 62592-000 Brazil (E-mail: tamarce@tamar.org.br);
²ICMBio-Piauí, Praça Santo Antônio 843, Parnaíba - PI, 64200-030 Brazil (E-mail: magnusms.ibama@yahoo.com.br);
³Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rua Leopoldo Bulhões 1480-8A, Rio de Janeiro - RJ, 21041-210 Brazil (E-mail: paulo.barata@ensp.fiocruz.br)

On 28 December 2006, a sea turtle bearing the flipper tag PPM-433/NMFS LAB was found stranded dead by a fisherman (Mr. Antonio R. da Costa) on Bitupitá Beach (2.90°S, 41.27°W), state of Ceará, northern Brazil, on the border with the state of Piauí. Species and carapace size were not recorded at the time. The flipper tag originally had been applied to a green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) captured on 29 October 1997 in the feeding grounds of Puerto Manglar, Culebra, Puerto Rico. At that time, the turtle had a straight carapace length (SCL) of 41.7 cm. The turtle was recaptured at that same location on 10 June 1998 measuring 46.6 cm SCL. After the second capture in Puerto Rico, the turtle was neither captured nor seen again before the stranding in northern Brazil (C. E. Diez, personal communication, 2007).

Figure 1. Records of green turtle movements between Ceará, northern Brazil, and the Caribbean region obtained since 1997 through flipper tagging. Arrows only connect capture and recapture locations and do not imply actual travel routes. Map generated by SEATURTLE.ORG Maptool. 2002. SEATURTLE.ORG, Inc. <https://seaturtle.org/maptool/> 23 April 2007.

This is the fifth tag return since 1997 from green turtles moving between Ceará, Brazil, a green turtle feeding ground, and the Caribbean region, as recorded by Projeto TAMAR-ICMBio, the Brazilian Sea Turtle Conservation Program (Figure 1). Among the five records, four documented movements between feeding grounds, and one documented movement between a rookery in the Caribbean and Ceará. Besides the Puerto Rico record reported here, three green turtles captured at sea and tagged at Almofala, Ceará (2.93°S, 39.82°W), where TAMAR maintains a station (Lima 2001), were later found dead in Trinidad (a juvenile with curved carapace length (CCL) of 48 cm when tagged in Brazil) and Nicaragua (two turtles, one with CCL of 88 cm and the other with CCL of 98 cm when tagged in Brazil) (Lima et al. 1999; Lima et al. 2003; Lum et al. 1998). In addition, a green turtle tagged on the nesting beach of Tortuguero, Costa Rica was found dead in Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará (3.72°S, 38.53°W); this turtle had CCL of 106 cm when tagged in Costa Rica (Lima & Troëng 2001).

Small juvenile to adult green turtles, with CCL ranging from 20 to 132 cm (N = 655, data for 1993-2005, Projeto TAMAR-ICMBio, unpublished data, 2007), have been found at sea or stranded on beaches at Almofala, Ceará. The five flipper tag returns, indicating green turtle movements both ways between the coast of Ceará and the Caribbean region, are consistent with previous findings. Tagging data obtained in the 1960s and 1970s revealed that green turtles nesting at French Guiana, Suriname, and Ascension Island (United Kingdom) migrated to the coast of Ceará (Carr 1973, 1975; Pritchard 1973, 1976). Genetic analyses based on mitochondrial DNA indicated that approximately half of the juvenile green turtles found at Almofala originate from Ascension Island, and roughly forty percent originate from the Matapica (Suriname), Aves Island (Venezuela) and Tortuguero (Costa Rica) rookeries. Other nesting areas in the Atlantic, such as Trindade Island (Brazil), may also contribute in a lesser way to the juvenile green turtle population at Almofala (Naro-Maciel et al. 2007). Overall, these results point to the need for concerted conservation actions between Brazil and the Caribbean, as well as Ascension Island.

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank C. E. Diez for kindly sharing his tagging data, and Luciano Soares and Centro Mamíferos Aquáticos (CMA-ICMBio), Unidade Executora Regional do Piauí, for making this work possible. Our thanks also to Eugenia Naro-Maciel, for critical reading of the manuscript and valuable suggestions which helped us to improve this note. Projeto TAMAR, a conservation program of the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, is affiliated with ICMBio (the Brazilian Institute for Biodiversity Conservation—Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade), is co-managed by Fundação Pró-Tamar and is officially sponsored by Petrobras.

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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.A. 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. TROENG. 2001. Link between green turtles foraging in Brazil and nesting in Costa Rica? Marine Turtle Newsletter 94:9.

LIMA, E.H.S.M., C.J. LAGUEUX, P.C.R. BARATA & M.A. MARCOVALDI. 2003. Second record of a green turtle (Chelonia mydas) tagged in Brazil and captured in Nicaragua. Marine Turtle Newsletter 101:27.

LUM, L.L., E.M. LIMA & A. SANTOS. 1998. Green turtle tagged in Brazil recovered in Trinidad. Marine Turtle Newsletter 82:9.

NARO-MACIEL, E., J. H. BECKER, E.H.S.M. LIMA, M.A. MARCOVALDI & R. DESALLE. 2007. Testing dispersal hypotheses in foraging green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) of Brazil. Journal of Heredity 98: 29–39.

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PRITCHARD, P.C.H. 1976. Post-nesting movements of marine turtles (Cheloniidae and Dermochelyidae) tagged in the Guianas. Copeia 1976: 749-754.