Suzie, an adult female green turtle and first turtle in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) to be fitted with a satellite transmitter tag, arrived back in the TCIs’ coastal waters on Sunday after an amazing 6,000 kilometre migration around the eastern Caribbean.
Earlier in the year, Brian and Natasha from the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR) came to visit our Year 3/4 class to talk about sea turtles (See our previous blog post). The children created some turtle art work and this is currently displayed at the Environmental Centre opposite the Children’s Park in the Bight. Click on to learn more about Suzie and her travels.
Suzie’s story hit the headlines in the UK last year after she was tracked swimming straight to the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla, also UK Overseas Territories, immediately after leaving the TCI on September 1st. After she left Anguilla, she went on to visit Barbuda, Martinique, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas. She spent about two weeks in Barbuda’s coastal waters, longer than anywhere else on her journey. Her tracking data strongly suggests she nested on Barbuda’s Low Bay on the night of the 18th October, and beach surveys carried out a few days later revealed fresh green turtle tracks. Her last port of call was Great Inagua in the Bahamas, where she had been since the 8th of January, and it was from there that she swam to TCI. On Sunday 23rd January she arrived offshore of North West Point in Providenciales and is now making her way along the TCIs’ northern coast back to her feeding grounds off East Caicos.
“Suzie’s journey has really surprised us. It is well known that green turtles can migrate thousands of kilometres from their feeding grounds to their nesting beaches. They usually lay several clutches of eggs during the nesting season, making these epic journeys worthwhile, but Suzie’s tracking data suggests she swam 6,000 kms around the Caribbean to lay just one clutch of eggs. It’s incredible!” said Amdeep Sanghera, Marine Conservation Society Project Officer, “It’s great to have Suzie back in the Turks and Caicos Islands safe and sound. Her journey passed through the territorial waters of eight different countries, and has shown us that these countries each have a responsibility for the conservation of their shared turtle resources.”
Suzie was fitted with a satellite tag by the Turks and Caicos Islands Turtle Project after she was procured from a fisher who landed her for the pot on the island of South Caicos at the end of June 2009. The Project is a collaborative initiative between the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR) and the School for Field Studies (SFS) in the TCI, and the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and the University of Exeter in the UK. The team is carrying out research into the TCIs’ turtle populations and turtle fishery. With the satellite tagging they aim to provide insights into the range of the adult green and hawksbill turtles found in the TCIs’ waters.
“Suzie has become a local celebrity in TCI, especially here in South Caicos where she was originally landed and tagged,” said Tommy Philips, Conservation Officer with the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources in TCI, “For the last few months we have displayed her latest tracking maps in public places around South Caicos and everyone keeps asking ‘Where Suzie at?! Seasoned turtle fishers have been amazed to learn that their turtles can travel so far, and some of them have started to think differently about the management of their fishery.'”
The Project team hope to maintain this interest through four adult hawksbill turtles they have also satellite tagged with support from the People’s Trust for Endangered Species and the British Chelonia Group. One of these turtles, an adult female hawksbill named Jewel, laid her fifth clutch of eggs over the weekend and may be about to embark on her own migration from TCI. The turtles can be tracked online at www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?project_id=398<http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?project_id=398> The DECR respectfully requests anyone encountering any turtles fitted with satellite transmitters in TCIs’ waters to please leave them alone and report their encounter to Project Officer Amdeep Sanghera on 649 332 8325.
Amdeep Sanghera, Turks and Caicos Islands Turtle Project Officer, Marine Conservation Society (MCS), South Caicos, TCI. Tel. +1649 3328325, e-mail: amdeep.sanghera@mcsuk.org.
Peter Richardson, Biodiversity Programme Manager, Marine Conservation Society (MCS), UK. Tel: +44 (0)1989 566017, +44 (0)7793 118383. E-mail: peter@mcsuk.org