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Suzie was fitted with the satellite tag by the Turks and Caicos Islands Turtle Project on 24 June 2009 after she was procured from a fisher who had landed her for consumption at South Caicos. The Project is a collaboration between local and international partners who are carrying out research into TCIs’ turtle populations and the country’s regulated turtle fishery (the fishery is described in detail in Richardson et al. 2006, 2009). One principal aim of the satellite telemetry study is to reveal insights into the range of adult green and hawksbill turtles found in the TCIs’ waters.

Figure 1. Suzie’s migration path and direction in these range states: (1) Turks and Caicos Islands, (2) British Virgin Islands, (3) Anguilla, (4) Barbuda, of Antigua & Barbuda, (5) Martinique, (6) Haiti, (7) Dominican Republic and (8) Grand Inagua in the Bahamas.

After her release on the north coast of East Caicos on 25 June, close to where she was originally captured, Suzie made her first foray in the media, with the local newspapers announcing the first study of its kind in TCI. Initially, Suzie stayed amongst the inshore patch reefs and sea grass beds off East Caicos for two months, but on 01 September, she made her move away from the TCI. By early October she had swum directly to the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and then Anguilla, and because, like the TCI, these are UK Overseas Territories, Suzie made the news again. Her passage through the islands was excitedly announced in the press of both the BVI and Anguilla. In the UK, The Times hailed her as an ‘anglophile green turtle’, while The Daily Telegraph and the Metro newspapers claimed that her journey through three consecutive UK Overseas Territories, hundreds of kilometres apart, had left scientists baffled and dumbfounded! The BBC’s online news pages featured more sober reporting, including photos of Suzie, a map of her journey, a link to Seaturtle.org and the online tracking site, excellent coverage that led to the story featuring on at least 25 other online news sites from around the world.

But this was merely the beginning of Suzie’s journey and she soon moved on, arriving in Barbuda on 8 October. There she remained for two weeks and, unlike anywhere else on her route, the tracking data strongly suggested that she attempted nesting during the nights of 17 and 18 October on the beaches of Low Bay. Intriguingly, local researchers carried out a boat-based beach survey of Low Bay a few days later and found fresh green turtle tracks close to the emergence locations suggested by the satellite tracking data, but could not confirm whether the nesting attempt was successful. Suzie made the local press again before leaving Barbuda on 22 October, heading east and then south, stopping at Martinique for just five days, where she generated yet more local press coverage, before swimming west into the Caribbean Sea.

After 24 days of swimming non-stop across the Caribbean Sea, Suzie eventually arrived at the southwestern tip of Haiti on 2 December. Surprisingly, instead of taking the more direct northwest route to TCI, she headed due east and swam along the entire southern coast of Hispaniola before rounding the southeast tip of The Dominican Republic. A month later, when it looked like she might finally be going back to TCI, she swam west to Great Inagua, Bahamas, her eighth range state, where she remained for two more weeks. Suzie finally made it back to the TCIs’ inshore waters on 23 January 2010, after a 145 day long journey.

The fact that Suzie’s journey could be tracked online every day at Seaturtle.org (Coyne & Godley 2005) generated unprecedented interest and enthusiasm for the project along the way, especially in South Caicos where she was originally landed. The Turks and Caicos Islands Turtle Project team kept residents there up to date by regularly displaying her most recent maps in various public places around the island, and were often stopped in the street to be asked ‘Where Suzie at?’ Seasoned TCI turtle fishers have been amazed to learn that their turtles travel so far and some stated that Suzie has made them think differently about the management of their fishery. The Project team hopes to maintain this interest through the online tracking of four adult hawksbill turtles that have also been fitted with satellite tags and released back into the TCIs’ waters, although they have a hard act to follow. Suzie’s journey may be the longest satellite tracked green turtle migration recorded in the Caribbean (cf. Godley et al. 2008), a fascinating journey that not only raised the profile of her species in the region, but also raised several questions, with perhaps the most perplexing being ‘Did she really migrate 6,000 kms to lay just one clutch of eggs?’

Acknowledgements: The Turtles in the Turks & Caicos Islands Project is a collaboration between the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources and The School for Field Studies in TCI, the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and the University of Exeter in the UK and Duke University in the USA. It is funded by MCS Ambassadors Anne and Simon Notley, the Natural Environment Research Council and the project partners. The satellite telemetry study is funded by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species and the British Chelonia Group. The authors thank our colleagues Shannon Gore in the British Virgin Islands, James Gumbs in Anguilla, Mykl Clovis and John Fuller in Antigua & Barbuda, Rozenn Le Scao in Martinique and Jesus Tomas for their generous help, information and advice offered along the way. We would especially like to thank Michael Coyne for his tireless efforts working with Seaturtle.org and STAT, without which Suzie’s incredible journey would not have been so accessible to so many.

COYNE, M.S. & B.J. GODLEY. 2005. Satellite Tracking and Analysis Tool (STAT): an integrated system for archiving, analyzing and mapping animal tracking data. Marine Ecology Progress Series 301: 1-7.

GODLEY, B.J., J.M. BLUMENTHAL, A.C. BRODERICK, M.S. COYNE, M.H. GODFREY, L.A. HAWKES & M.J. WITT. 2008. Satellite tracking of sea turtles: where have we been and where do we go next? Endangered Species Research 4: 3-22.

RICHARDSON, P.B., A.C. BRODERICK, L.M. CAMPBELL, B.J. GODLEY & S. RANGER. 2006. Marine turtle fisheries in the UK Overseas Territories of the Caribbean: domestic legislation and the requirements of multilateral agreements. Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy 9: 223 - 246.

RICHARDSON, P.B., M.W. BRUFORD, M.C. CALOSSO, L.M. CAMPBELL, W. CLERVEAUX, A. FORMIA, B.J. GODLEY, AC. HENDERSON, K. MCCLELLAN, S. NEWMAN, K. PARSONS, M. PEPPER, S. RANGER, J.J. SILVER, L. SLADE & A.C. BRODERICK. 2009. Marine turtles in the Turks And Caicos Islands: remnant rookeries, regionally significant foraging stocks and a major turtle fishery. Chelonian Conservation & Biology 8: 192-207.