Many turtle species are endangered through a variety of human activities, from beach development, boating and shipping, and fishing. Awareness of the problems has mostly focused on protection of beaches used for breeding as individuals return to highly specific sites where they are particularly vulnerable. Apart from their breeding sites, much less is known about their long and complex movement...

© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org T US Endangered Species Act requires that a recovery plan be developed for each species listed as threatened or endangered with extinction, with the aim of helping the species to recover so it can eventually be removed from Federal listing (ie delisting). Tremendous effort and considerable funds have been invested in the development...

Significant gaps exist in our understanding of early sea turtle life stages. Dispersal and habitat use of young oceanic sea turtles are largely inferred. Historically, available tracking technology and tag attachment methods were limited by small body sizes and rapid growth of neonate sea turtles. We tested methods in the laboratory for attaching small solar-powered satellite tags to neonate lo...

Marine turtles undergo dramatic ontogenic changes in body size and behavior, with the loggerhead sea turtle, Caretta caretta, typically switching from an initial oceanic juvenile stage to one in the neritic, where maturation is reached and breeding migrations are subsequently undertaken every 2-3 years. Using satellite tracking, we investigated the migratory movements of adult females from one ...

BACKGROUND Sea turtles (Chelonoidea) are a charismatic group of marine reptiles that occupy a range of important ecological roles. However, the diversity and evolution of their feeding anatomy remain incompletely known. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Using computed tomography and classical comparative anatomy we describe the cranial anatomy in two sea turtles, the loggerhead (Caretta caretta)...

Coastal waters of Florida’s Big Bend, Gulf Mexico (GOM) once supported one the largest sea turtle fisheries in United States. To fill an information gap this region on abundance and distribution turtles, we used vessel—based distance sampling active capture methods to characterize current foraging aggregations near St. Martins Marsh Aquatic Preserve. Over 10 periods between 2012—2018, completed...