Sea Turtle Recovery Action Plan for Barbados - WIDECAST

Barbados Sea Turtles …
4.293 Immature and adult turtles
Monitoring populations of juvenile turtles and non-nesting adults is difficult, yet some
estimation of relative abundance over time is necessary in order to evaluate the success of
conservation measures. Dive operators have expressed interest in collaborating with the tagging
and monitoring of turtles seen regularly at their dive sites. Such cooperation is welcome and is
encouraged. To date, Bellairs Research Institute has tagged 13 adult hawksbills, 40 juvenile
hawksbills, 15 juvenile green turtles, and two juvenile loggerheads. Adults are tagged with
Titanium tags marked "Bellairs, Barbados, Reward". Sub-adults are tagged with monel tags
inscribed with a University of Florida, Gainesville, address; tags were supplied by Dr. Karen A.
Bjorndal, Director of the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research.
One tagged adult female hawksbill re-nested two years after she had been tagged, and
within a few hundred metres of the original nest spot. Several tags have been returned from
turtles netted or speared by Barbados fishermen. One loggerhead tagged and released in
Barbados was recaptured two years later in southwest France and was later released unharmed.
This animal was one of two flown to Barbados after they stranded on a beach in Cornwall, U.K.
No leatherbacks have been tagged.
Knowledge of immature and adult turtle offshore behaviour and habitat use could be
furthered by the initiation of ultra-sonic or VHF-radio tracking of tagged animals. Ultra-sonic
tags are self-identifying, transmitting unique aural codes that can be heard on the same frequency
and thus allowing several animals to be tracked simultaneously. Ultra-sonic tags were used with
success to track the inter-nesting movements of hawksbills nesting on Buck Island off the north
coast of St. Croix, U. S. Virgin Islands, in 1991. In the same study, even greater success was
realized using VHF radio transmitters (Scott Eckert, Hubbs-Sea World Research Inst., pers.
comm.). A programme using either or both of these techniques is recommended for Barbados.
4.3 Encourage and Support International Legislation
4.31 CITES
If the harvest of all sea turtles is prohibited by national legislation (as is currently under
consideration, see section 4.23), persons catching turtles or offering turtle products for sale can
be prosecuted. In support of these improvements in national legislation, it will be important to
terminate all international sea turtle shell and product trade. The problems created by trade are
illustrated by the fact that while there was a ban on sea egg (Tripnuestes ventricosus) harvest in
Barbados, some supermarkets continued to import sea egg products from Grenada, making it
difficult to enforce the ban. One way to coordinate trade restrictions on sea turtle products is for
Barbados to join the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora (CITES), a powerful and effective global trade treaty that has been ratified by 112
countries (WWF, 1992). Discussion is ongoing between the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and
Fisheries, the Ministry of Trade and Commerce, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on acceding
to this Convention. It is the recommendation of this Recovery Action Plan that Barbados make
accession to CITES a high priority. Japanese Customs statistics indicate that nearly 2,000
hawksbill turtles have been killed for export from Barbados to Japan since 1970 (section 3.3).
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