Sea Turtle Recovery Action Plan for St. Kitts and Nevis - WIDECAST

CEP Technical Report No. 17
the protection of regionally depleted species, including sea turtles, is a priority. Although the
Government of St. Kitts/Nevis has periodically contributed to the Caribbean Environment
Programme Trust Fund, as of 31 July 1992 it had not yet ratified the Cartagena Convention
(UNEP, 1992). It is a recommendation of this Recovery Action Plan that the Cartagena Convention
and its Protocols be ratified and implemented by St. Kitts/Nevis as soon as possible.
4.33 Subregional sea turtle management
It is well documented that sea turtles are among the most migratory of Caribbean fauna.
There have been hundreds of cases of turtles tagged in one area and captured in another. Leatherbacks
tagged in locales as distant as Chesapeake Bay (USA) and Tortuguero (Costa Rica) have
been killed after swimming into Cuban waters (Carr and Meylan, 1984; Barnard et al., 1989).
One leatherback tagged while nesting on St. Croix (USVI) later stranded in New Jersey, US
(Boulon et al., 1988); another was captured in Campeche, Mexico (Boulon, 1989). A leatherback
tagged while nesting in French Guiana in May 1970 was caught one year later in Ghana,
west Africa, some 6000 km away (Pritchard, 1973). Juvenile hawksbills tagged in the USVI
have been recovered in Puerto Rico, St. Lucia, St. Martin, Ginger Island (BVI) (Boulon, 1989)
and the Dominican Republic (Ralf Boulon, USVI Div. Fish and Wildlife, pers. comm., 1991). A
young hawksbill tagged in Brazil was killed 3700 km away by a fisherman in Dakar, Senegal, six
months later (Marcovaldi and Filippini, 1991). An adult hawksbill tagged on Long Island
(Antigua) whilst nesting was later captured by a fisherman in Dominica (Fuller et al., 1992).
Adult green turtles tagged while nesting in Costa Rica have been recovered from the
Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico), the USA, Mexico, throughout Central America,
and from Colombia and Venezuela (Carr et al., 1978; Meylan, 1982). Juvenile green turtles tagged
in the USVI have been recaptured in the Grenadines, the Dominican Republic, and the
Bahamas (Boulon, 1989). Green turtles nesting in Suriname are routinely recaptured in Brazil
(Pritchard, 1976). Meylan (1983) reported that "several" green turtles captured by nets off the
southeast and southwest coasts of Nevis, as well as in the vicinity of Newcastle, have borne tags
originally put on at the nesting beach on Isla Aves, some 200 km to the southwest. Indirect
evidence of the migratory nature of sea turtles is also available in St. Kitts/Nevis -- all turtle
fishermen are familiar with the seasonal arrival of gravid (=egg-bearing) turtles prior to the
annual nesting season. Tagging efforts in St. Kitts/Nevis would be useful in further clarifying
the international movements of Caribbean sea turtles. Mr. Augustine Merchant (Director, Department
of Agriculture, Nevis) has approached WIDECAST asking that interested Nevis fishermen
be taught how to tag and then release turtles caught incidental to other fishing activities.
It is intuitive that any action taken to protect sea turtles must be shared among nations
that hold these species in common. This is why the WIDECAST project is active in all countries
of the Wider Caribbean (the West Indies and Latin America), developing recovery plans and
setting priorities for national and international action on behalf of remaining sea turtle stocks
(section 4.53). In the case of St. Kitts/Nevis, it is virtually certain that foraging populations are
shared with other nations and territories in the northeastern Caribbean. Juvenile turtles travel
widely during the decades prior to sexual maturity. In addition, nesting females may travel
hundreds or, in the case of leatherback turtles, thousands of kilometers in order to lay their eggs
on the beaches of St. Kitts/Nevis. Fisheries staff are encouraged to alert fishermen to the impor-
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