On the island of Boavista, inCape Verde, surviving has become difficult fortortugas bobas ( Caretta caretta ). Each year, hunters kill about 1,000 females of the 10,000 that nest in the area. If the situation continues, they could disappear in a couple of decades.
Luckily all is not lost. A total of1,250 loggerhead turtle eggs have just arrived in Spainfrom Cape Verde and have been distributed on the beaches of the Canary Islands and Andalusia (Cabo de Gata). And another 150 have been deposited in incubators. According to the Spanish biologist Adolfo Marco, “if it is proven that the restoration of the species is viable in Spain, thebrought in eggs for at least ten years, as well as the release of baby turtles on Spanish beaches so that they return to the birth beaches after their maturation, within 10 or 20 years. “In this way, he adds, they would consolidate astable nesting on the Spanish coast. After all, it is the most common pond turtle in the western Mediterranean and its nesting in Spain has been known since the 19th century, although it is probably much older.
The experts assure that the chosen beaches are ideal for thebaby turtles, since the sex of these animals is determined above all by the temperature at which the eggs are incubated and in these waters the appropriate temperatures are given to produce both males and females, cushioning the bias that occurs on other beaches due to warming global.
In addition, the recovery program will also serve to assess the potential of turtles as natural controllers of jellyfish pests. Likewise, the development of this study will allow to deepen the knowledge of the importance of the terrestrial magnetic information in theorientation of loggerhead turtlesand in the navigation behavior of the youngest animals, which will be monitored by means ofultrasound and satellite emitters.
