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Marine Turtle Newsletter 59:7-8, © 1992
Alan B. Bolten1, Karen A. Bjorndal1, and José Carlos Santana2
1ACCSTR, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611 USA,
2Instituto Español de Oceanografía, Centro Oceanográfico de Canarias,
38080 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
As part of a collaborative project coordinated through the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research (ACCSTR) to tag pelagic sea turtles in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, a loggerhead turtle was tagged by one of us (JCS) on 13 June 1987 in the waters off the Canary Islands (28°35'N, 17°41.6'W). The turtle measured 84 cm in straight carapace length and was tagged with a monel #681 tag (National Band and Tag, Newport, Kentucky). A fisherman, Fernando Soto Soto, caught the same turtle five months later on 14 November 1987 off the south coast of Isla de la Juventud, Cuba. The turtle was not measured. The minimum distance travelled by this turtle was approximately 6900 km; minimum rate of travel was about 45 km/day.
This recapture is the second record of a large juvenile loggerhead crossing the Atlantic. The first, reported by Eckert and Martins (1989), was of a 75-cm loggerhead that travelled from Florida to the Azores with a 552-day interval. These records indicate that at least some large loggerheads inhabit the pelagic zone in the Atlantic, and not just small loggerheads as originally hypothesized by Carr (1987). This research is supported by the Marine Entanglement Research Program of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Carr, A. 1987. New perspectives on the pelagic stage of sea turtle development. Conservation Biology 1:103-121.
Eckert, S. A. and H. R. Martins. 1989. Transatlantic travel by a juvenile loggerhead turtle. Marine Turtle Newsletter 45:15.