Green turtles headed for freedom

Catherine Bell, Curator, Marine and Research with one
of the turtles that will be heading for freedom

Thursday,  October 27, 2005

On Wednesday, 2 November, ten lucky turtles will be on their way to freedom when the annual Cayman Turtle Farm/Boatswain’s Beach holds its twenty-fifth annual turtle release.

The turtles will begin their new lives of freedom from Seven Mile Beach, where the public will have the opportunity to join the Farm in its conservation efforts.

The release will show-case ten turtles of approximately one year of age, each fitted with a metal tag engraved with an identification number and the address of the Farm.

The Farm’s release programme, known to biologists as ‘headstarting’, has placed over thirty-one thousand green sea turtles into the wild since 1980. Historically the Cayman Islands boasted one of the largest green sea turtle populations in the Caribbean and possibly the world.

There were so many turtles when he discovered the Islands in 1503 that Christopher Columbus named them ‘Las Tortugas’. 

From as early as the Seventeenth Century this natural resource had become commercially extinct and by 1900, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had deemed the population extinct in the Cayman Islands. 

Today, according to the Department of Environment data, there are less than thirty adult female green sea turtles nesting in the Cayman Islands each year. One objective of the headstarting programme is to provide the replenishment of the local reproductive population.

Analysis of data collected from tag returns of released turtles has demonstrated some success. Tag returns, from between 1 month to 19 years after release, have come from Belize, Cayman, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and USA, with released turtles following similar migratory pathways as those born in the wild.

Some Farm-released turtles have even come back to nest in Cayman as adults, with reproductive data showing clutch size, incubation duration and hatch success to be comparable to those of wild turtles. 

Growth rates in recaptured animals released from the Farm have been shown to be similar to wild, caught animals of the same species in the region. These data demonstrate that released animals are adapting readily to their new environment and are adopting behavioral characteristics that allow them to survive in the wild and potentially to reproduce and contribute to the long-term enhancement of wild stocks.

Residents can also enter the Farm’s draw to release a green sea turtle on the day. 

The event begins at 4:00 pm with the turtle release occurring promptly at 5:00 pm. 

To enter to win a chance to release one of our marine friends please sign up at the Boatswain’s Beach Box Office located in the Reception Building before 4:00 pm on Monday 31 October. 

For further information please call the Box Office at 949-3894.

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