Optimism for mitigation of climate warming impacts for sea turtles through nest shading and relocation

Our research published this week in Scientific Reports reported effective conservation strategies that can mitigate the impacts of climate warming on sea turtle nesting success, #oceanoptimism.

Little-Curaçao-green-turtle swims 3100 km in 3 weeks

Last week we* successfully placed a satellite transmitter on a big green turtle female after she nested at Little Curacao’s turtle beach. The signals of the ARGOS satellite are updated hourly and I am very happy to report that this female is swimming very fast in the direction of Nicaragua 1050km in the first 10 …

Experiment on (invasive) seagrass & turtle grazing, Bonaire

Two weeks ago we arrived on Bonaire. Since then we worked non-stop and we made great progress! The first thing we did was to set up a turtle exclosure experiment on the seagrass beds in Lac Bay, after Funchi (STCB) and Sabine Engel (STINAPA) kindly showed us all the suitable seagrass areas. The native dominant …

Sea turtle fieldwork in Dutch Caribbean 2015

I am very excited to finally start our fieldwork on sea turtles and seagrass in the Bonaire, Aruba and Curacao! What started as a proposal (initiated by Lisa Becking and me) in August 2013, finally resulted in a research project May 2015 entitled  “Ecology and conservation of Green and Hawksbill turtles in the Dutch Caribbean”.

Fieldwork Derawan 2014 photo series

I had the opportunity to go back to Derawan for 3 more weeks of fieldwork, thanks to the Schure Beijerink Popping foundation. I gathered samples for food web analysis, checked the current turtle density and seagrass biomass, recaptured green turtles and made a new series of aerial photographs with a kite (with super assistant Sipke …

Green turtles threaten their own food source in MPAs: New paper Proceedings B

Our new paper is out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B! Green turtle populations have expanded so much in Indonesia’s east coast islands marine protected areas that they are adopting new feeding habits, degrading the ecosystem and threatening their own conservation. Read more about  “Habitat collapse due to overgrazing threatens turtle conservation in marine protected …