HPA/NMFS SEA TURTLE RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION PROGRAM

Pala'au Tagging Trip 2007

On Wednesday, July 24th, George Balazs, Bob Morris, Shawn Murakawa, Stacy Kubis and Marc Rice traveled to Molokai to capture and tag green turtles in the Pala'au area. This is a study site that has been sampled regularly since the mid-80's. We sampled for three days and captured a total of 30 turtles. All of the turtles were seemingly healthy and the fibropapilloma incidence rate seems to continue to remain low, down in the 10-15% rate. At one point in the mid-90's, the incidence rate reached nearly 60%.

In addtion to capture and tagging work, the team joined the Mo'omomi Turtle Volunteers to excavate a couple of previously hatched nests at the Mo'omomi beach nesting site. There were two nests that had hatched a few days previous to our visit and by excavating them, we were able to free one "trapped" hatchling and obtain tissue samples in order to conduct DNA analysis to determine what population the female turtles belong to. This particular beach is managed by the Nature Conservancy and is monitored daily by the volunteers for new nests and for hatchling emergence. According to George Balazs, it appears that there may be three separate females laying this year.

George, Marc and Bob spent several nights out at Mo'momi in the hopes of observing a nesting female. The goal was to get genetic material from the female and attach a satellite tag in order to determine where the females home forage grounds were located. Unfortunately, no females came out during the three days of observation.

Below is a flash animation of some pictures from Mo'omomi excavations! To see a short video clip of a couple of the escavations please click on Mo'omomi Movie!