Community partnerships support major expansion of leatherback sea turtle conservation research in Puerto Rico

BOSTON, MASS. (October 2, 2024) – Despite navigating new terrain and challenging weather conditions that included extreme heat, rain, and flash flooding, a team from the New England Aquarium worked with local partners Amigos de las Tortugas Marinas (ATMAR), Chelonia, Proyecto de Conservasión de Tortugas Marinas – Vida Marina, and the Puerto Rico Departamento de Recursos Naturales y Ambientales DRNA to tag 18 leatherback sea turtles in an annual effort to study and track nesting in Puerto Rico.

**PHOTOS AND VIDEO AVAILABE HERE, WITH COURTESY TO NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM**

Leatherback sea turtle populations in the North Atlantic are undergoing widespread nesting beach declines and face an uncertain future. In the United States, leatherback sea turtles are an endangered species, and Puerto Rico and Northeast US waters are important habitats for them. From late February to early July, leatherback females lay their eggs on the beaches of Puerto Rico, followed by a summer migration to temperate northern habitats to feed on jellyfish.

This past season marks the fifth year that staff from the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life has collaborated with community-led sea turtle conservation groups to study nesting leatherbacks. Using satellite tags, the team, which this year included an Aquarium biologist, collects data on leatherback reproductive behaviors and patterns, including nest dispersal (where leatherbacks lay their eggs), frequency of nesting, inter-nesting habitats (where leatherbacks swim between nesting events), and post-nesting migration to northern foraging areas. These tagging and monitoring efforts are crucial in helping to identify opportunities to protect leatherbacks across the Caribbean during the breeding and nesting season, and throughout the Northwest Atlantic during migration and feeding.

Dr. Kara Dodge, a research scientist with the Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life and her colleagues, including Sarah Perez, a senior biologist with the Aquarium’s animal care team, and Emily Jones, scientific program officer with the Anderson Cabot Center, spent about three weeks this past May making a migration of their own, circumnavigating the island to work with leatherbacks on the north, west and southeast coasts. Typically, the team focuses on one nesting beach but thanks to additional funding and support from new local partners, they were able to expand the project scope to include three regions with some of the highest leatherback nest numbers in Puerto Rico. Two of the sites have had little to no satellite tagging effort, presenting an opportunity to compare turtle behavior from adjacent nesting regions for the first time.

“This was our most ambitious research season to date, both in terms of tag number and study sites,” Dodge said. “We were incredibly successful thanks to the tireless efforts of our local partners, many of whom volunteer because they are passionate about protecting Puerto Rico’s sea turtles.”

Anderson Cabot researchers are now tracking the leatherbacks’ migration paths in real time, some of which can be seen on the Aquarium’s website. Leatherback turtles are powerful swimmers and can travel more than 60 kilometers (almost 40 miles) a day and can make long migrations across entire ocean basins. They are currently heading north along the US east coast and Canada, and into the Gulf of Mexico, in search of jellyfish.

Dodge is already making plans to return to the same sites next year, aiming to ramp up data collection at the newer sites on the north and west coasts to catch up to the amount of data they’ve collected from the longer-term site in the southeast.

MEDIA CONTACT: Hannah Boutiette, 413-717-7759, hannah@teakmedia.com