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Marine Turtle Newsletter 54:12-13, © 1991

Hawksbill Turtles in the Mediterranean Sea

Luc Laurentand Jean Lescure
Laboratoire Reptiles et Amphibiens, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle,
57 rue Cuvier, 75005 Paris, France

The presence of hawksbill sea turtles, Eretmochelys imbricata, in Mediterranean waters is considered exceptional. We are aware of only four published records: one (a young female) captured near Marseille (Mourgue 1909), another in Albania (Frommhold 1959), a third collected close to the southern Sicilian coast, and one in Malta; the latter two specimens were deposited in the Palerma and Mdina Museums, respectively (Gramentz in litt. to Groombridge 1990).

Three new hawksbill records for the Mediterranean Sea from French waters have now been reported (Laurent 1990). These include one turtle captured in a drift net near Grau-du-Roi (37 cm curved carapace length, CCL) between 1960 and 1965, a second juvenile (44 cm CCL) captured close to Nice in 1982 and deposited in the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle of Nice (No. 1985-37), and a third juvenile (41.2 cm CCL) captured in a net fixed at a depth of 2 m near Sanary (Pointe de la Cride) near Toulon on 20 July 1988.

Gruvel (1931) noted that hawksbills were occasionally found in the eastern region of the Mediterranean Sea, but that he had not personally observed them there. The origin of these animals is always questionable. Do they enter from the Red Sea via the Suez Canal, or from the Atlantic through Gibraltar? We believe that they enter from the Red Sea because several hawksbill nesting sites occur on the shores of the Red Sea in Egypt (Frazier and Salas 1984) and Sudan (Jirth and Abdel Latif 1980). Nonetheless, the crossing of the Suez Canal by sea turtles is not mentioned by Dov Por (1978) for the Lessepian migration.

We consider that hawksbills are accidental and occasional species in the Mediterranean Sea. No nesting occurs there and the infrequent sightings are doubtless of vagrant individuals.

Dov Por, F. 1978. Lessepian migration. The influx of Red Sea biota into the Mediterranean by the Suez Canal. Springer Verlag, New York.

Frazier, J. and S. Salas. 1984. The status of marine turtles in the Egyptian Red Sea. Biol. Cons. 30:41-67.

Frommhold, E. 1959. Als Tiergärtner und Herpetologie in Albanien. Aquar. Terrar. 6:115-118, 144-147.

Groombridge, B. 1990. Marine turtles in the Mediterranean Sea: distribution, populations, and protection. Conseil de l'Europe, Strasbourg. Coll. Sauvegarde de la Nature 48:1-116.

Gruvel, A. 1931. Les Etats de Syrie. Richesses marines et fluviales. Exploitation actuelle Avenir. Soc. Ed. Géogr. Marit. Colon., Paris. 453 p.

Hirth, H. F. and F. M. Abdel Latif. 1980. Nesting colony of the hawksbill turtle, Eretmochelys imbricata, on Seil Adakebir Island Suakin Archipelago, Sudan. Biol. Cons. 17:125-130.

Laurent, L. 1990. Les tortues marines des côtes françaises méditerranéennes continentales. Faune de Provence. Bull. CEEP 11: in press.

Mourgue, M. 1909. Capture de Chelone imbricata femelle, en rade de Marseille. Feuil. Jeun. Nat. 4(463):144.