Leatherback Sea Turtle

Description:

Considered to be critically endangered by the IUCN. The main procedure for evaluating the status of sea turtles is through surveys of reproduction activity at nesting beaches. Decline in nesting has been documented to be much greater than 80% in most of the populations of the Pacific, which has been considered the species' major stronghold. In other areas of its range, the observed declines are not as severe, with some populations showing trends towards increasing or stable nesting activity. Analysis of published estimates of global population sizes (Pritchard 1982, Spotila et al. 1996), suggest a reduction of over 70% for the global population of adult females in less than one generation. The populations in the Pacific Ocean, the species’ stronghold until recently, have declined drastically in the last decade, with current annual nesting female mortalities estimated at around 30% (Sarti et. al. 1996, Spotila et al. 2000). In some areas, formerly abundant rookeries have almost disappeared. For the Atlantic Ocean, the available information demonstrates that the largest population is in the French Guyana but the trends there are unclear. Some of the Caribbean nesting populations appear to be increasing but their sizes are very small when compared to those that nested in the Pacific coasts less than 10 years ago.

Habitat:

Nest on sandy beaches. The juveniles may remain in tropical waters warmer than 26°C, near the coast, until they exceed 100 cm in curved carapace length. When adults, they are pelagic and live in open ocean, sometimes in temperatures below 10°C. There are very few sighting of males near the coast during the breeding season, only the females are near to the coast during the breeding season and go to the beach to nest.

Notes:

Hatchlings made their way to the Atlantic Ocean at San San Pond Sak (located down the river from Changuinola, near Bocas del Toro, Panama).