MTN 158:12-13 First Confirmed Hawksbill Nesting on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala

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First Confirmed Hawksbill Nesting on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala

Colum Muccio¹ & Sergio Izquierdo²
¹Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Association [ARCAS], Ciudade de Guatemala, Guatemala (E-mail: arcasguatemala@gmail.com);
²Asociación de Biología Marina de Guatemala [ABIMA], Ciudade de Guatemala, Guatemala (E-mail: info@abima.org)

The first confirmed nest made by a hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) on the Pacific coast of Guatemala occurred during the night of 22 July 2018 near the village of Madre Vieja (13.91103° N, 90.56161° W), 8 km west of the touristic resort of Monterrico. Local egg collectors Claudio and Estuard Montepeque were the first to encounter the turtle and were struck by its size and the fact that it took over 3 hours to lay its eggs. They were joined by one of us (SI), who photo-documented the nesting (Fig. 1). The nesting turtle had a metal flipper tag in its left front flipper (GK254; Fig. 2). A total of 156 eggs were collected from the nest and transported to the El Banco Hatchery, 4 km to the east, for protected incubation. All but five of the eggs produced hatchlings, which were then released to the ocean.

SI contacted CM, who then contacted members of the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative (ICAPO) and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). According to these groups, the flipper tag #GK254 was first applied to an adult female hawksbill turtle nesting in Bahia de Jiquilisco, El Salvador on 09 June 2014. This site is ~300 km from the nest deposited at Madre Vieja, which is the longest distance between nests ever recorded for a single hawksbill turtle in the eastern Pacific. This is also one of the few examples of multinational nesting in the region by an individual hawksbill turtle.

In Guatemala, juvenile hawksbills are occasionally reported as incidentally captured by fisherman in mangrove estuaries and in the ocean (Gaos et al. 2010; Brittain et al. 2012). Between 1982 and 2009, two hawksbill nests were reported in Pacific Guatemala (Gaos et al. 2010), although these records lacked photographic evidence. The nest described here is the first confirmed hawksbill nest on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. The discovery is extremely significant considering that all nests on the Guatemalan Pacific coast are laid by olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea), with green turtles (Chelonia mydas) and leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) also nesting infrequently in the country. This documentation should help raise awareness about the presence of hawksbills in Guatemala, and hopefully will result in additional records of local nesting by this critically endangered species.

Figure 1. Nesting hawksbill sea turtle on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, in July 2018. The eggs were collected and transported to a protected hatchery for incubation.

Figure 2. Metal flipper tag with ID GK254 on the hawkbill turtle’s left front flipper.

Acknowledgements. We thank Ingrid Yañez of ICAPO and Jeff Seminoff of NOAA for information on the tagging history of this hawksbill turtle.

BRITTAIN, R., S. HANDY & S. LUCAS. 2012. Two reports of juvenile hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) on the southeast coast of Guatemala. Marine Turtle Newsletter 133:20-22.

GAOS, A.R., F.A. ABREU-GROBOIS, J. ALFARO-SHIGUETO, D. AMOROCHO, R. ARAUZ, A. BAQUERO, R. BRISEÑO, D. CHACÓN, C. DUEÑAS, M. LILES, G. MARIONA, C. MUCCIO, J.P. MUÑOZ, W.J. NICHOLS, M. PEÑA, J.A. SEMINOFF, M. VÁSQUEZ, J. URTEAGA, B. ALLACE,
I.L. YAÑEZ & P. ZÁRATE. 2010. Signs of hope in the eastern Pacific: international collaboration reveals encouraging status for the severely depleted population of hawksbill turtles Eretmochelys imbricata. Oryx 44: 595-601.