Researchers tag nesting female hawksbill turtles in order to document population estimates, nest slaughters, and total number of egg clutches.
The size of a hawksbill turtle nesting population is defined as the average number of individual females nesting per year.
In some cases, population numbers can be determined by saturation tagging of nesting females or by recording the total number of slaughtered nesters. More often, however, population estimates need to be derived from records of the total number of egg clutches laid during a season.
Following the pattern of earlier status reviews, the present assessment calculates the annual number of nesting females by dividing the total number of egg clutches recorded, by three to five to produce a bracketed population estimate.
Sources: (Richardson, Bell, & Richardson, 1999; Mortimer & Bresson, 1999; Mortimer & Donnelly, 2008)
Image: Gerwin Sturm
