Abstract
For decades, loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) have been brought into captivity following a medical emergency and then released following mild to extreme rehabilitation and surgical treatments. However, there are few data about how effective these medical procedures are long-term, and what, if any, effects are on the turtle’s lifestyle once the turtle has been released.1 In order to better understand a sea turtle’s behavior post release, new technology such as satellite tags and accelerometers can be placed on the carapace of the turtle to track their movements and behavior. Accelerometers in particular are quite useful for identifying specific behaviors; accelerometers are electromechanical devices that are used to measure acceleration and/or position by detecting motion along the x, y, and z axes.2 This provides information about the animal’s position, orientation, and direction of movement. Before using accelerometers to identify specific behaviors in the field however, the patterns observed in the x, y and z axes for a certain behavior must be determined in a controlled lab setting by comparing the accelerometer data to the observed behaviors. We aim to use accelerometers to effectively quantify the behaviors of juvenile loggerhead sea turtles in a lab, with the goal of eventually using accelerometers to check the behaviors of sea turtles released post-rehabilitation. We plan to identify a variety of sea turtle behaviors including turning, diving, food-seeking, and breathing. Preliminary analyses have found patterns in the accelerometer data that correspond with specific behaviors. Currently, there are very few studies on sea turtle behavior post release that use accelerometers, and as such, this study seeks to provide tools for future researchers and for aquatic animal health specialists.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the Bald Head Island Conservancy staff for helping the Lohmann lab to collect hatchling loggerhead sea turtles for this research. All research was conducted under University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill IACUC ID 17-292.0 and North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Permit 19ST44. Funding for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Air Force.
*Presenting author
+Student presenter
Literature Cited
1. Baker L, Edwards W, Pike D. 2015. Sea turtle rehabilitation success increases with body size and differs among species. Endang Species Res 29:13–21.
2. Fehlmann G, O’Riain JM, Hopkins PW, O’Sullivan J, Holton MD, Shepard EC, King AJ. 2017. Identification of behaviors from accelerometer data in a wild social primate. Anim Biotelemetry 5:6.