Revista de Biología Tropical ISSN Impreso: 0034-7744 ISSN electrónico: 2215-2075

OAI: https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/rbt/oai
Catch per unit effort and population structure of the Pacific green turtle (Chelonia mydas) in the Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica.
PDF (Español (España))
HTML (Español (España))

Keywords

Foraging grounds
entanglement nests
mangroves
sea grass.
Áreas de alimentación
redes de enmalle
manglares
pastos marinos.

How to Cite

Chacón-Chaverri, D., Martínez-Cascante, D. A., Rojas, D., & Fonseca, L. G. (2015). Catch per unit effort and population structure of the Pacific green turtle (Chelonia mydas) in the Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica. Revista De Biología Tropical, 63(S1), 363–373. https://doi.org/10.15517/rbt.v63i1.23115

Abstract

The Golfo Dulce is one of the few tropical fjords in the world, and has recently been declared a Marine Area for Responsible Fisheries (AMPR), harboring mangrove ecosystems, coral reefs and seagrass beds, which are important feeding areas for green turtles (Chelonia mydas). In this study we estimate the catch per unit effort (CPUE) and population structure in a site in the western sector of the Golfo Dulce. Between August 2010 and March 2013, were captured a total of 253 green turtles (including 20 recaptures) using entanglement nets. The annual CPUE (CPUE, 1 unit: 100m of net for 7h) during the study ranged between 0.19 and 0.45, decreasing gradually over the years, possibly prompted by mass mortality occurred in January 2013. We found that seasonality and temporality influence the CPUE according to the best-fit model. About 78.17% were considered adult females, with an average length of curved carapace (LCC) of 79.6±0.9cm. The female recaptured has been tagged previously in the Galapagos Archipelago. While none of the turtles tagged in the Golfo Dulce was reported nesting on any other beach. Our results suggest that the Golfo Dulce is an important area for green turtles, where individuals congregate for adults and subadults would feed on seagrasses and the fleshy parts of the mangroves. The area also represents a major challenge for international conservation, possibly because we captured adult females from nesting beaches of Panama and Colombia, which requires multilateral agreements that promote the recovery of the East Pacific green turtle. We suggest the continuation of this conservation project to use sea turtles as umbrella species to protect ecosystems in the Golfo Dulce.

 
https://doi.org/10.15517/rbt.v63i1.23115
PDF (Español (España))
HTML (Español (España))

References

Alvarado, J., & Figueroa, A. (1992). Recapturas Post-Anidatorias de Hembras de Tortuga Marina Negra (Chelonia agassizii) Marcadas en Michoacán, México. Biotropica, 24, 560-566.

Amorocho, D. F., & Reina, R. D. (2007). Feeding ecology of the East Pacific green sea turtle Chelonia mydas agassizii at Gorgona National Park, Colombia. Endangered Species Research, 3, 43-51.

Bjorndal, K. A. (1997). Foraging ecology and nutrition of sea turtles. Pp. 199-231. In P. L. Lutz & J. L. Musick (Eds.), The biology of sea turtles (pp. 199-231). Boca Raton, USA.: CRC Press.

Bjorndal, K. A., & Bolten A. B. (2010). Hawksbill sea turtles in seagrass pastures: success in a peripheral. Marine Biology, 157, 135-145.

Blanco, G. S., Morreale S. J., Bailey, H., Seminoff, J. A., Paladino, F. V., & Spotila, J. R. (2012). Post-nesting movements and feeding grounds of a resident East Pacific green turtle Chelonia mydas population from Costa Rica. Endangered Species Research, 18, 233-245.

Chacón, D., Sánchez, J., Calvo, J. J., & Ash, J. (2007). Manual para el manejo y la conservación de las tortugas marinas en Costa Rica; con énfasis en la operación de proyectos en playa y viveros. San José, Costa Rica: Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación (SINAC), Ministerio de Ambiente y Energía (MINAE).

CITES. (2012). Convención sobre el Comercio Internacional de Especies Amenazadas de Fauna y Flora Silvestres. Apéndice I, II y III. Ginebra, Suiza. Disponible en http://www.cites.org

Clark, J. S. (2007). Models for ecological data: an introduction. New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press.

Cornelius, S. E. (1976). Marine Turtle Nesting Activity at Playa Naranjo, Costa Rica. Brenesia, 8, 1-25.

Dapp, D., Arauz, R., Spotila, J. R., & O’Connor, M. P. (2013). Impact of Costa Rican longline fishery on its bycatch of sharks, stingrays, bony fish and olive ridley turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea). Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 448, 228-239.

Delgado-Trejo, C., & Alvarado-Díaz, J. (2012). Current Conservation Status of the Black Sea Turtle in Michoacán, México. In J. A. Seminoff & B. P. Wallace (Eds.), Sea Turtles of the Eastern Pacific: Advances in Research and Conservation (pp. 236-278). Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.

Felger, R. S., Cliffton, K., & Regal, P. J. (1976). Winter dormancy in sea turtles: independent discovery and explotation in the Gulf of California, México by two local cultures. Science, 191, 283-285.

Fonseca, L. G., Villachica, W. N., Matarrita, R. E, & Valverde, R. A. (2011). Reporte final de la anidación de tortuga verde (Chelonia mydas), Playa Nancite, Parque Nacional Santa Rosa, Costa Rica (Temporada 2010-2011) (Informe Técnico). Guanacaste, Costa Rica.

Fonseca, L. G., Quirós, W., Villachica, W. N., Mora, J., Heidemeyer, M., & Valverde, R. A. (2013). Anidación de tortuga verde (Chelonia mydas) del Pacífico, en la Isla San José, Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica (Temporada 2012-2013) (Informe Técnico). Costa Rica: Institute for Tropical Studies Field Studies.

Fonseca, L. G., Rojas, D., Volkart, C., Chacón, D., & Chacón-Chaverri, D. (2014). Reporte Final del proyecto de reforestación de manglares en Playa Blanca, Costa Rica (Diciembre 2012-Febrero 2014) (Informe Técnico). Costa Rica: WIDECAST.

Gelman, A., Carlin, J. B., Stern, H. S., Rubin, D. B., Chatfield, C., Tanner, M., & Zidek, S. (2004). Bayesian data analysis. Florida, USA.: Chapman & Hall/CRC.

Green, D. (1984). Long-Distance Movements of Galapagos Green Turtles. Journal of Herpetology, 18, 121-130.

Herrera-Bejarano, D. (2013). Necropsias y estudios post-morten realizados en 3 tortugas marinas (Informe Técnico). Costa Rica: WIDECAST.

Jensen, M. P., Abreu-Grobois, F. A., Frydenberg, F., & Loeschke, V. (2006). Microsatellites provide insight into contrasting mating patterns in arribada vs. non-arribada olive ridley sea turtle rookeries. Molecular Ecology, 15, 2567-2575.

Koch, V., Brooks, L. B., & Nichols, W. J. (2007). Population ecology of the green/black turtle (Chelonia mydas) in Bahía Magdalena, Mexico. Marine Biology, 153, 35-46.

López-Mendilaharsu, M., Gardner, S. C., Seminoff, J. A., & Riosmena-Rodríguez, R. (2005). Identifying critical foraging habitats of the green turtle (Chelonia mydas) along the Pacific coast of the Baja California peninsula, Mexico. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystem, 15, 259-269.

Pizarro, F., & Angulo, H. (1993). Diagnóstico de los manglares de la costa Pacífica de Costa Rica: Informe para la Comisión Nacional de Manglares. Costa Rica: UICN.

R Development Core Team. (2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0.

Raftery, A. E., & Lewis, S. M. (1995). The number of iterations, convergence diagnostics and generic Metropolis algorithms. In W. R. Gilks, D. J. Spiegelhalter & S. Richardson (Eds.), Practical Markov Chain Monte Carlo (pp. 1-15). London: Chapman & Hall.

Santidrián-Tomillo, P., & Hernández, R. (2012). Análisis de la Anidación de Tortugas Marinas en Playa Cabuyal y Golfo de Papagayo Sur (Informe Técnico). Guanacaste, Costa Rica.

Seminoff, J. A., Jones, T. T., Resendiz, A., Nichols, W. J., & Chaloupka, M. (2003). Monitoring green turtles (Chelonia mydas) at a coastal foraging area in Baja California, Mexico: multiple indices describe population status. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, 83, 1355-1362.

Seminoff, J. A., Zárate, P., Coyne, M., Foley, D. G., Parker, D., Lyon B. N., & Dutton, P. H. (2008). Post-nesting migrations of Galápagos green turtles Chelonia mydas in relation to oceanographic conditions: integrating satellite telemetry with remotely sensed ocean data. Endangered Species Research, 4, 57-72.

Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN). (2012). IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN Global Species Programme Red List Unit, Cambridge, UK. Retrived from http://www.iucnredlist.org/

Wenger, S. J., & Freeman, M. C. (2008). Estimating species occurrence, abundance, and detection probability using zero-inflated distributions. Ecology, 89, 2953-29-59.

Zárate, P., & Dutton, P. (2002). Tortuga verde. In E. Danulat & G. J. Edgar (Eds.), Reserva Marina de Galápagos. Línea base de la biodiversidad (pp. 305-323). Parque Nacional Galápagos, Santa Cruz, Ecuador: Fundación Charles Darwin.

Zárate, P., Fernie, A., & Dutton, P. (2003). First results of the East Pacific green turtle, Chelonia mydas, nesting population assessment in the Galapagos Islands. In J. A. Seminoff (Ed.), Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation (pp. 70-73). USA: NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-SEFSC-503.

Zárate, P., Parra, M., & Carrión, J. (2007). Informe Final Proyecto Anidación de la Tortuga Verde Chelonia mydas, durante la Temporada de Anidación 2006-2007. Parque Nacional Galápagos, Santa Cruz, Ecuador: Fundación Charles Darwin.

Comments

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright (c) 2015 Revista de Biología Tropical

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.