In early October, the Monaco Explorations teams teamed up with a CNRS and Ifremer operation in Martinique. The goal of this collaboration? To study the behavior of green turtles using onboard cameras and innovative connected tags.
During this operation at Anses d’Arlet, classic visual capture tags were glued to several shells and then retrieved at sea. In parallel, prototypes of a new generation of geolocation tags were affixed to two of these green turtles. They are expected to facilitate the tracking of these animals near the coasts. Jérôme Bourjea, researcher at Ifremer, explains: « This is the first time this technology is being used on wild marine animals. We will work in the coming months to optimize the system with the ambition of being able to transmit data in very large quantities and to see if it would allow us to geolocate them; which would open new perspectives for research and the knowledge of turtles.«
Long-term actions
And this is not the first mission of its kind on the Martinique coasts. Since 2013, the Hubert Curien Multidisciplinary Institute (a research unit under the joint supervision of CNRS and the University of Strasbourg) has been equipping green turtles with high-tech backpacks to study their distribution, movements, and feeding. « We have captured and released over forty green turtles, recorded over 30 hours of footage, and collected over 250 samples » summarizes Damien Chevallier, CNRS researcher and head of this scientific program. « Our samples allow us to take a snapshot of their health status today, an assessment of the factors and threats affecting these species, but also to understand the evolution of the populations we have been tracking for nearly 10 years. »
Involving future generations
It is necessary to communicate and explain to the younger generation the importance of this type of action. Thus, 14 classes of students aged 8 to 11 were welcomed on-site as part of the Educational Marine Areas program. Corinne Copin, project officer at the Monaco Oceanographic Institute, reflects on this meeting: » the exchanges with the young students around the workshops set up were intense: present species, life cycles, pollution issues, including plastics, are all topics that were addressed. The work done here by CNRS, Ifremer, and Monaco Explorations is likely to make a significant contribution to turtle conservation programs through technology as well as education. »
On site, many stakeholders (prefecture, environmental institutions, associations, and diving clubs) participate and support this project. It is at the heart of the national action plan for marine turtles in the French Antilles.
opening image © Olivier Borde – Monaco Explorations.
Margot Harty