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Leatherback Tracking in South Africa
Citation
Luschi, P., A. Sale, R. Mencacci, G.R. Hughes, J.R.E. Lutjeharms, and F. Papi. 2003. Current transport of leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) in the ocean. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 270 suppl. 2: 129-132. https://marineinfo.org/id/dataset/3659
Contact: Luschi, Paolo

Availability: Creative Commons License This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Notes: Only data aggregated per 1-degree cell are available through OBIS. The non-aggregated data are available through the OBIS-SEAMAP Portal

Description
Dataset from tracking information of the post-nesting movements of leatherbacks nesting in South Africa and understand their behavior. more

The Indian Ocean has many breeding areas for sea turtles, the southernmost ones being on the Maputaland coast of KwaZulu-Natal, where leatherback turtles nest in large numbers thanks to long-lasting protection programs. For the leatherback this is the only known nesting site in the entire western Indian Ocean. At the end of the reproductive season, leatherbacks undertake migrations towards disparate feeding areas. To contribute to their conservation, the migratory behavior of these animals has been studied by satellite telemetry for several years. This species turned out to frequent widely dispersed areas ranging from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mozambique Channel, performing large-scale wandering probably due to the leatherbacks' feeding habits on macroplankton such as jellyfish and salps. These movements have been shown to be heavily influenced by the main oceanic currents and oceanographic mesoscale features occurring in the areas crossed.

Scope
Themes:
Biology > Reptiles
Keywords:
Marine/Coastal, A, Atlantic, ISW, Indian Ocean, Testudines

Geographical coverage
A, Atlantic [Marine Regions]
ISW, Indian Ocean [Marine Regions]

Temporal coverage
16 January 1996 - 16 July 2003

Taxonomic coverage
Testudines [WoRMS]

Contributors
University of Pisa, more
University of Pisa; Department of Biology; Islameta Group, moredata owner

Related datasets
Published in:
OBIS-SEAMAP: Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations, more

Publication
Based on this dataset
Luschi, P. et al. (2003). Current transport of leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) in the ocean. Proc. - Royal Soc., Biol. Sci. 270(Suppl 2): 129-132. https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2003.0036, more

URL

Dataset status: Completed
Data type: Data
Data origin: Monitoring: field survey
Metadatarecord created: 2012-11-29
Information last updated: 2012-11-29
All data in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS) is subject to the VLIZ privacy policy