World Status, Exploitation and Trade - WIDECAST

CAYMAN ISLANDS(E.G. Roet in litt. to R. Parsons, 17 February 1983). The last import ofadults was from Mexico in September 1977 (J.R. Wood in litt. . 16 June1983). The total number of adult turtles obtained is estimated to be around250 (Mrosovsky, 1983).Breeding The wild-collected eggs have been incubated on the farm, andthe hatching success experienced is shown in Table 39. The first hatchlingsobtained from eggs laid on the farm (by parental breeding stock collectedfrom the wild) took place in 1973. Since then, successful breeding hasoccurred regularly; the numbers of eggs laid and their hatching success rateis also shown in Table 39. The first successful hatching of eggs obtainedfrom adults which themselves had been hatched on the farm occurred in 1975,and the numbers of eggs produced, together with their hatching success rate,are shown separately in Table 39. It can be seen that the hatching successhas been considerably lower for eggs from the farm-reared stock than fromthe captive-wild stock, which, in turn, was lower than from thewild-collected eggs. The low success has been attributed to diminishedfertility, the causes of which are still being investigated, but are thoughtto be related to the greater obesity of farm-reared animals and the shortertime spent in coition (Anon., 1985f).There has been no second-generation breeding of turtles on the farm.Turtles conceived and hatched on the farm have only recently reachedmaturity. The first two such females laid eggs in 1983 and a further twobroods were laid in 1984, but none of the eggs has hatched (Ford, 1985).Table 39. Hatching results of eggs incubated at Cayman Turtle Farm,obtained from different sources: 1. Wild-collected eggs, purchased by thefarm; 2. Eggs laid by turtles in the farm which had been collected from thewild as adults (Captive-wild); 3. Eggs laid by turtles in the farm whichhad themselves been hatched from eggs on the farm (Farm-reared). Data fromAnon. (1985f) and E.G. Roet ( in litt. to R. Parsons, 17 February 1983).Hatching successes in brackets are for only part of the total eggs laid.Year