TRACKING
Where they go
and what they do
Marine turtles are migratory, feeding in one place and migrating, often thousands of miles, to nesting sites where they breed and lay their eggs. The sea turtle nesting beaches in North Cyprus are identified, well studied and some of the most important beaches are largely protected. However, after turtles leave the nesting beaches and swim away, we have little idea where they go, yet these areas are where the turtles spend most of their lives. That was until the late 1990s when we began to invest in satellite tracking. The only way that we can track a sea turtle in the open ocean is to attach a transmitter and wait for uplinks to be received. If we can find out where the turtles migrate to, we can help to reduce the threats both at that location and along their migratory pathways, through sharing data and collaboration with other countries.
Since 1998 over 110 satellite transmitters have been attached to marine turtles breeding and foraging in North Cyprus. From these studies, we now know that none of the turtles breeding in North Cyprus leave the Mediterranean. The majority migrate to the North African coast where we have identified several key foraging sites for both green and loggerhead turtles including the Nile Delta and Lake Bardawil in Egypt, the Gulf of Bomba in Libya and the Gulf of Gabes in Tunisia where many loggerheads nesting in Greece also forage. Less than 10% of those tracked stay in Cyprus post-breeding, possibly because of heavy fisheries bycatch mortalities. And by tracking turtles over many decades we are now seeing new foraging area emerging, which may be driving our increased nest counts.
You can read our published tracking studies at the scientific publications page.
2025: Discovering New Foraging Sites of Loggerhead Turtles
This year in collaboration with Eastern Mediterranean University (DAU) and with financial support of Türkiye İş Bankası we are joining forces to track two loggerhead turtles from North Cyprus shores. This new work will help us to understand if the foraging areas used by loggerheads nesting in North Cyprus, are changing with time. Then, as well as protecting them on our beaches, we can work with international partners to protect them in new foraging areas which may be thousands of kilometres away.
On July 3 this year, with the DAU team, fate was upon us when our joint team encountered a very special turtle on Iskele beaches. As we were preparing the carapace for the attachment, someone said….”hang on, this turtle is tagged!”. On June 6 2013, local fisher Ahmet Kahveci had caught this turtle in his nets in the Iskele area and brought it to shore for inspection. Together with the fisher we tagged and released the turtle. What a surprise to find the turtle on the beach preparing a nest 12-years later. The turtle had grown by 3 cm during this time. Now we will understand if she was a resident foraging individual back then, or whether she was then visiting Cyprus from distant seas as a younger breeding adult.
Meanwhile in Alagadi, we are specifically targeting a new turtle which has begun to mature relatively recently. This is only possible because of the extensive long-term night time monitoring project established at the site. Our hypothesis is that individuals who joined the breeding population relatively recently, may be using new foraging sites, as has been shown for green turtles through our recent tracking projects.
Photography: Finnegan Crouch