The Na­tion­al Sea Tur­tle Mon­i­tor­ing Pro­gramme fund­ed through the Green Fund and At­lantic has been in­valu­able in T&T's con­ser­va­tion ini­tia­tive. To­day, our leatherback pop­u­la­tions are be­ing sus­tained even with the nat­ur­al risks posed by cli­mate change and its im­pact on nest­ing beach­es.

But all is not well for our lo­cal hard-shell tur­tles, par­tic­u­lar­ly at Grande Riv­iere. Over the last ten years, sea tur­tle nest­ing has been mon­i­tored at Grande Riv­iere.

Grande Riv­iere boasts of hav­ing the high­est den­si­ty beach in the world and dur­ing the tur­tle sea­son, thou­sands flock to this site to view the mag­nif­i­cent spec­ta­cle of hun­dreds of sea tur­tles nest­ing night­ly. But while to a vis­i­tor this is won­der­ful, as a con­ser­va­tion­ist this pos­es a chal­lenge to the man­age­ment of the species.

Da­ta col­lect­ed over the years sug­gest that there is a great im­pact of high den­si­ty leatherback nest­ing ac­tiv­i­ty on hatch suc­cess of green and hawks­bill tur­tles: yes, the re­al­i­ty is that the hatch suc­cess is less than 20 per cent and this has been a cause for con­cern.

In re­sponse to this con­cern, Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust in part­ner­ship with the Grande Riv­iere Na­ture Tour Guides As­so­ci­a­tion, and with fund­ing from At­lantic es­tab­lished two re­search ini­tia­tives in 2014 with hard-shell sea tur­tles: a Pi­lot Hatch­ery and Head­start Pro­gramme, and the pre­lim­i­nary site as­sess­ment for the Off­shore Pro­gramme (Trinidad).

The pur­pose of the hatch­ery and head start study on Grande Riv­iere beach was aimed at es­tab­lish­ing and man­ag­ing an ar­ti­fi­cial nest­ing habi­tat, iden­ti­fy­ing the suit­abil­i­ty of such meth­ods to the suc­cess of the nests and hatch­lings pro­duced, in­creas­ing the chances of sur­vival of the green and hawks­bill tur­tles hatch­lings pro­duced, in­creas­ing the like­li­hood of re­cruit­ment to for­ag­ing as­sem­blages and sub­se­quent­ly, adult breed­ing pop­u­la­tions.

Night­ly mon­i­tor­ing of the beach for vul­ner­a­ble hard­shell nests was car­ried out. These vul­ner­a­ble nests were re­lo­cat­ed to the hatch­ery. Mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion built wood­en box­es for the hatch­ery phase of the project.

In 2014, ten hawks­bill nests and one green nest were re­lo­cat­ed to hatch­ery box­es, and ten hawks­bill nests and one green nest was left in the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment for in­cu­ba­tion as a com­par­a­tive study of nest suc­cess for hard­shells.

In the month of Sep­tem­ber, the nat­ur­al and re­lo­cat­ed nests in the hatch­ery be­gan to emerge. The hatch­ing suc­cess of each of the nests was al­so de­ter­mined through nest ex­ca­va­tions.

The hatch­lings were col­lect­ed and a ran­dom­ly se­lect­ed sam­ple of hatch­lings from each of the nests was in­spect­ed for de­for­mi­ties or ab­nor­mal­i­ties, and fit­ness tests were per­formed to de­ter­mine the rel­a­tive health of the hatch­lings and for com­par­a­tive pur­pos­es. For each site a sub-sam­ple of dead hatch­lings was sent for his­to­log­i­cal analy­sis of go­nad tis­sue for sex de­ter­mi­na­tion. Nat­u­ral­ly failed eggs and shells with fun­gal colonies were sent for lab­o­ra­to­ry analy­sis.

The find­ings from the 2014 re­sults are very promis­ing. In the hatch­ery en­vi­ron­ment the hatch­ing suc­cess was around 85-88 per cent, that is 50-70 tur­tles per nest. The ma­jor­i­ty of hatch­lings were re­leased from shore dur­ing ear­ly evening hours af­ter per­for­mance tests were car­ried out. Five per cent of the nest hatch­lings were kept as a small sam­ple from each nest and placed in­to their rear­ing tanks and are mon­i­tored dai­ly to ob­serve be­hav­iour along with rel­a­tive abil­i­ty in feed­ing, div­ing and swim­ming. Growth rates and birth de­fects were al­so mon­i­tored to iden­ti­fy the pos­si­ble con­se­quences of hatch­ery birthing.

The ma­jor find­ing from this project was that nests re­moved to the hatch­ery en­vi­ron­ment out­per­formed the nat­u­rals left on the beach which were used as con­trols for the project.

The pro­gramme shows great promise and it is hoped that it can be trans­posed to ad­dress a sim­i­lar threat caused by the de­vel­op­ment tak­ing place in the Ch­agu­ra­mas Penin­su­lar.

Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust is seek­ing to en­gage the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty through the EMA in this ini­tia­tive. Let us con­tin­ue to work to­geth­er to pro­tect these am­bas­sadors of the sea.