An adult female green turtle fitted with a satellite transmitter tag has migrated over 900 km and has visited three UK Overseas Territories in the Caribbean since the beginning of September. Suzie the turtle was fitted with the tag in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) at the end of June earlier this year, after being bought from a fisherman. After the turtle was tagged and released, she spent two months in TCI waters, but started migrating on the 1st of September, swimming over 820 km straight to the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

Green turtle with satellite tag

Then, after a week in BVI, Suzie migrated over 120 km, arriving on Monday in the waters of Anguilla, her third consecutive UK Overseas Territory.

The tag was fitted onto Suzie’s shell by the Turks and Caicos Islands Turtle Project, a collaborative initiative between the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and the University of Exeter in the UK, and the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR) and the School for Field Studies (SFS) in TCI. The project is carrying out research into the turtle populations and turtle fishery in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), and the satellite tagging work aims to reveal the full ranges of the turtle populations found there.

“Suzie’s journey is a remarkable first. She was the first turtle ever to be fitted with a satellite tag in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and her journey has told us for the first time that three of the UK Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, hundreds of kilometres apart, share green turtle populations,” said Peter Richardson, MCS Biodiversity Programme Manager, “We would never have predicted that she would visit three UK Territories in a row without stopping at any of the other countries on the way. Suzie has revealed that each of these Territories has a responsibility to look after their shared turtle resource.”

Each of the territories takes a different approach to the management of their turtle fisheries. The Turks and Caicos Islands’ laws prohibit the take of nesting females and their eggs on the nesting beaches, but allow the capture at sea of any turtle with a shell over 20 inches at any time of the year. In the BVI, the laws prohibit the take of nesting females and their eggs on nesting beaches, but allow the capture at sea of green turtles with shells over 24 inches and hawksbill turtles with shells over 15 inches in length, but only during an open season from December to March. The Government of Anguilla, however, imposed a 15-year, temporary ban on all turtle fishing in 2005 in order to allow their turtle populations to recover.

- Peter Richardson, Biodiversity Manager, MCS

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