Survival of Pelagic Juvenile Loggerhead Turtles in the Open Ocean

• Published in: Journal of Wildlife Management
• Main Authors: Sasso, Christopher R., Epperly, Sheryan P.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2007
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.2193/2006-448

We deployed pop-up archival transmitting tags on 15 loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) that had been lightly hooked in the United States pelagic longline fishery and on 10 loggerheads that we dip-netted off the surface to serve as controls in the North Atlantic Ocean. We received data from tags of 10 lightly hooked turtles and 7 control turtles. We used data transmitted by the tags in a known-fate model to estimate annual survival rates and determine if there were differences in survival between the 2 groups. The best model indicates there is no difference in survival between the lightly hooked and control turtles, and the estimated annual survival rate was 0.814 (95% CI = 0.557–0.939). Our results suggest that when all fishing gear is removed lightly hooked turtles may not suffer any additional mortality relative to control turtles.