Sea Turtle Biogeography of the Pacific Islands

These maps display available nesting and satellite telemetry data for sea turtles in the Pacific Islands. The data include 793 nesting sites and 512 satellite tags representing greens, hawksbills, leatherbacks, olive ridleys, and loggerheads. Data were compiled through a literature review and provided directly to SWOT by hundreds of data contributors. Meta data and citations are included in the popups or can be downloaded here.

We are grateful to all of the data contributors and projects that participated in this effort.  

Nesting Biogeography 

Nesting sites are represented by dots colored by species and scaled according to their relative nesting abundance in the most recent year for which data are available. For uniformity, all types of nesting counts (e.g., number of nesting females, number of crawls) were converted to number of clutches as needed. Conversion factors ranged from 1.5 to 3.8 clutches per female and 0.58 to 0.81 crawls per clutch, depending on species. 

Satellite Telemetry 

The satellite telemetry map presents data from more than 500 green, leatherback, hawksbill, olive ridley, and loggerhead turtles and represents more than 508,000 animal locations. Only tracks from tags deployed in the Pacific Islands were included, thereby excluding some turtles that were tracked from outside of the Pacific Islands into the region’s waters. For more information on the mapping methodology, see the map’s legend.