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Figure 1. Monel tag 1039 of a green turtle from Cuba, found on green turtle stranded at Vieques, Puerto Rico, 22 years after tagging.

Figure 2. Location of initial tagging of a green turtle captured in its foraging area south of Isla de la Juventud, Cuba, and its stranding location 22 years later, in Vieiques, Puerto Rico.

This turtle had been originally tagged more than 20 years earlier, on 06 November 1997, by the Sea Turtle Tagging Program of the Cuban Fisheries Research Center (CIP) in the feeding grounds of Laguna Agustin Hall, off the southern coast of Isla de la Juventud (Fig. 2), which is located along the southwestern coast of Cuba. In 1997, the harvesting of sea turtles was legal in Cuba (the legal fishery for sea turtles ended in 2008). However, this captured green turtle was released because it did not meet the minimum size for harvesting, according to the Cuban fisheries regulation, which specified that all turtles <50 cm CCL must be released. At the time of first capture, the turtle measured 46.0 cm CCL and 40.3 cm CCW.

When the turtle was found stranded at Vieques Island (Icacos Beach) in 2019, a necropsy was not conducted, but an external examination of the body did not reveal any wounds or entangling material such as ropes or bags on the body or extremities. The animal was buried at the same site where it was found. Due to the stage of decomposition of the animal, it is estimated that the animal had died within two or three days before it was found stranded on Icacos Beach. The turtle’s tail did not extend beyond the carapace, and its carapace length was 115 cm CCL, therefore we concluded that it was an adult female. There are reports of green turtle nesting on this beach, but there was no evidence that this animal was nesting.

The time interval between the tagging date on this turtle in Cuba and when it was found in Puerto Rico was almost 22 years (8,030 days), which indicates that the turtle survived for almost two decades bearing the tag and reaching its sexual maturity within that time period. An estimated growth rate of 5.2 cm/yr was calculated for this turtle from the time of first capture (1997) and the last encounter (2020). This growth rate is similar to those reported for Puerto Rico and other places in the Caribbean (Patricio et al. 2014). It is estimated that green turtles can reach sexual maturity at a size ranging from 83 cm to 114 cm SCL, (Patricio et al. 2014; Goshe et al. 2010) or 87 cm to 118 cm CCL (according to conversion from CCL length to SCL by Bjorndal and Bolten 1989). .

Long distance recaptures of juvenile green turtles tagged in Cuban coastal waters have been reported previously from only two areas: Nicaragua’s feeding grounds and Costa Rica (Moncada et al. 2006). This current report not only confirms the connectivity between different areas in the Caribbean for green turtle migratory patterns (Moncada et al. 2006; Patricio et al. 2017), but also is the oldest recapture for a turtle tagged in Cuba by CIP. More molecular studies should be conducted at a wider scale to include smaller green turtle nesting rookeries like the one in Vieques, to fill the gaps of the origins of various important green turtle foraging areas in the Caribbean, such as the one in Laguna Agustin Hall, Cuba. This type of information highlights and strengthens the importance of regional conservation networks.

Acknowledgements. From Cuba, we thank the staff members of the Fisheries Research Center, Cuba, who have been tagging sea turtles for many years. From Puerto Rico, we thank Y. de la Cruz from TICATOVE and J. Vargas from PR-DNER, who assisted in the field. Finally, we thank M. Godfrey for the review of this manuscript.

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