Grant: 22-013R
Project Title: Understanding fine scale behavioral response of sea turtles to vessels to infer non-lethal impacts from vessel interactions
Project Manager: Mariana Fuentes
Organization: Florida State University (Research and Educational Institute)
Grant Amount: $30,775.00
Completion Date:
Summary: Sea turtles and boating activities often occur in shared waters. Vessel presence and traffic can affect the fitness of individual turtles, impact their energy expenditure, cause changes in foraging activities, and displacement and disturbance. However, limited information exists on how these parameters are impacted by vessel interactions. This is of particular concern, especially in areas heavily used by boats and that provide important foraging and developmental habitat for sea turtles. This is the case within the Big Bend Region of north-western Florida, which serves as important developmental habitat for green (Chelonia mydas), Kemp’s ridley (Lepidochelys kempii), and loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) and also supports Florida’s largest recreational bay scallop (Argopecten irradians) harvest. The scallop fishery occurs annually from late June to late September and attracts thousands of boaters to the region, which overlap with turtles in space and time. Recent advances in bio-logging devices, which include fine-scale movement measurements (e.g., accelerometer, gyroscope and time-depth recorder) as well as recordings of an animals surrounding, have allowed fine-scale behaviors of sea turtles to be determined and have provided fine scale information on behavioral response to disturbances. Thus, this project will leverage on recent advances in biologging devices, with the aim to quantify the fine scale response of sea turtles to vessel interactions. This will provide a better understanding of the energetic implications of sea turtle responses to vessel interactions and help inform management strategies.
Results: