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Marine Turtle Newsletter 127:25, © 2010
Hawksbill Tagged as a Juvenile in Puerto Rico Found Nesting in Panama 15 Years Later
Cristina Ordoñez Espinosa1, Anne B. Meylan2, Peter A. Meylan3, Isabel Peterson4, Carlos E. Diez5 & Robert P. van Dam6
1Caribbean Conservation Corporation, 4424 NW 13th St, Suite B-11, Gainesville, Florida 32609, USA
2Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, 100 8th Avenue Southeast, St. Petersburg, Florida 33701 USA
3Natural Sciences, Eckerd College, 4200 54th Ave. S., St. Petersburg, Florida 33711, USA
4Endangered Wildlife Trust
5Departamento de Recursos Naturales y ambientales, PO Box 366147, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00936
6Chelonia Inc, PO Box 9020708, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00902 (E-mail: rpvandam@yahoo.com)
On June 5 2009, a hawksbill turtle was encountered nesting at Playa Larga (9° 19’ 26”N 82° 8’ 3”) on Bastimentos Island National Marine Park in Bocas del Toro, Panama, bearing inconel tags SSL209 and X4613. The female measured 92 cm CCL (87.7 cm SCL, based on conversion formula in Van Dam & Diez 1998). The turtle returned to nest again at Playa Larga on June 20. Tagging information was traced through the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research and the turtle was originally tagged as a juvenile on the foraging grounds of Monito Island (18° 9’ 31”N 67° 57’ 6 “W), Puerto Rico, on July 29 1994, when it measured 26.1 cm SCL and weighed 2.2 kg. This hawksbill was recaptured at Monito Island in 1995 and 1996, but has not been encountered there since. Serum testosterone assays of juvenile hawksbills conducted in 1994 and 1995 (Diez & Van Dam 2003) had already indicated that this turtle was a female.
This tag return is exceptional because it documents the movement of a hawksbill transitioning from one life stage (juvenile) to another (reproductive adult). Typically, tag returns of hawksbills in the Caribbean have represented movements within a life stage, i.e., nesting females traveling to feeding grounds, or immature animals traveling between developmental habitat sites (Meylan, 1999). The data from this recapture affirm the conclusions by Bowen et al (1996) and Velez-Zuazo et al (2008) that hawksbills foraging at Mona and Monito Islands likely recruit from other Caribbean rookeries, and can be expected to return to breed at those rookeries. The tag return is also exceptional because of the great distance (1818 km minimum straightline distance) involved and the long period (14.9 years) of time that elapsed between the initial capture and the sighting in Panama. From previous tag returns, the minimum straightline distance travelled by immature hawksbills in the Caribbean ranged from 46 to 900 km (Meylan, 1999) with a maximum time elapsed of approximately six years. The average annual growth rate of the turtle we report on here over 14.9 years was 4.2 cm/yr. Marked differences have been observed between linear growth rates reported from immature hawksbills residing at different study sites in the Caribbean and in different habitats (Diez & Van Dam 2002).
Acknowledgements: We thank Peter Eliazar for tagging data exchange, and Arcelio Gonzales, Mónica Bustamante and Hiroyo Koyama for assistance in the field.
BOWEN B.W., A.L. BASS, A. GARCIA-RODRIGUEZ, C.E. DIEZ, R. VAN DAM, A. BOLTEN, K.A. BJORNDAL, M.M. MIYAMOTO & R.J. FERL. 1996. Origin of hawksbill turtles in a Caribbean feeding area as indicated by genetic markers. Ecological Applications 6: 566–572.
DIEZ C. & R.P. VAN DAM. 2002. Habitat effect on hawksbill turtle growth rates on feeding grounds at Mona and Monito Islands, Puerto Rico. Marine Ecology Progress Series 234: 301–309.
DIEZ C. & R.P. VAN DAM (2003). Sex ratio of an immature hawksbill seaturtle aggregation at Mona Island, Puerto Rico. Journal of Herpetology 37 (3): 533–537.
MEYLAN, A. 1999. International movements of immature and mature hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) in the Caribbean region. Chelonian Conservation & Biology 3: 189-194.
VAN DAM R. P. & C. DIEZ. 1998. Caribbean hawksbill turtle morphometrics. Bulletin of Marine Science 62: 145-155.
VELEZ-ZUAZO, X., W.D. RAMOS, R.P. VAN DAM, C.E. DIEZ, A. ABREU-GROBOIS & W.O. MCMILLAN. 2008. Dispersal, recruitment and migratory behaviour in a hawksbill sea turtle aggregation. Molecular Ecology 17: 839–853.