T&T's tur­tle con­ser­va­tion ef­forts will re­ceive a boost in the near fu­ture with the es­tab­lish­ment of a tur­tle hatch­ery and the use of GPS geo-tag­ging in the an­nu­al tur­tle cen­sus.

These new ini­tia­tives–spon­sored by LNG pro­duc­er At­lantic as a com­po­nent of its part­ner­ship with the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust–were an­nounced at a March 10 event held at the Va­len­cia Vis­i­tor Cen­tre to open the 2014 tur­tle sea­son, which runs from March 1 to Sep­tem­ber 30.

At­lantic CEO Nigel Dar­low ex­plained in a re­lease about the event, that as a part­ner with the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust since 2008, At­lantic has been the sole spon­sor of the Na­tion­al Sea Tur­tle Tag­ging and Mon­i­tor­ing Pro­gramme and its ac­tiv­i­ty in track­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go's tur­tle pop­u­la­tion and the tur­tles' an­nu­al glob­al mi­gra­to­ry move­ments.

"The Tag­ging and Mon­i­tor­ing Pro­gramme has pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal da­ta about the tur­tle pop­u­la­tion," Dar­low said. "Very im­por­tant­ly, nest­ing events in T&T have been on the in­crease over the last few tur­tle sea­sons. This is re­al­ly en­cour­ag­ing and some­thing which we must en­sure is sus­tained year on year."

For the 2013 sea­son, pre­lim­i­nary re­ports from the Tag­ging and Mon­i­tor­ing Pro­gramme in­di­cate that there were 8,256 con­firmed or es­ti­mat­ed lay­ings by 5,140 leatherback tur­tles. Based on the num­ber of nests, it is es­ti­mat­ed that the 2013 tur­tle pop­u­la­tion con­sist­ed of 10,280 nest­ing fe­males.

This con­trasts with the 2012 es­ti­mate of a nest­ing pop­u­la­tion to­talling 4,464 fe­male tur­tles. 2013's da­ta was col­lat­ed from 42 beach­es and nest­ing sites, an ex­pan­sion of the ter­ri­to­ry that was mon­i­tored in the pre­vi­ous ten years of the tur­tle cen­sus. In pre­vi­ous years, nest­ing ac­tiv­i­ty has been mon­i­tored at on­ly six "in­dex" beach­es: Fish­ing Pond, Matu­ra, Grande Riv­iere in Trinidad; and Tur­tle Beach, Mt Irvine and Stone­haven Bay in To­ba­go.

Us­ing the da­ta from the pre­vi­ous years, the Tag­ging and Mon­i­tor­ing Pro­gramme's pre­lim­i­nary re­port sug­gests a pos­i­tive trend in the num­ber of leatherback nests in Trinidad and To­ba­go. How­ev­er, the re­port fur­ther ad­vis­es that the da­ta should be viewed cau­tious­ly as it rep­re­sents on­ly a small sub­set of a much larg­er pop­u­la­tion es­ti­mate.

"Those of us who vis­it­ed Grande Riv­iere last year saw the sit­u­a­tion for our­selves," Dar­low said. "At times there were more tur­tles nest­ing than there was beach for them to nest. This sit­u­a­tion pos­es a new threat to the tur­tles, and it is clear that there is new work to be done this sea­son. We may have to cre­ate new spaces where the tur­tles can lay their eggs with­out dis­tur­bance and with­out threat to the hatch­lings."

De­signed to ad­dress that par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge of crowd­ed nest­ing beach­es, the tur­tle hatch­ery will al­low tur­tle con­ser­va­tion groups and com­mu­ni­ties prox­i­mate to nest­ing sites to gath­er and re-nest tur­tle eggs in a man­aged fa­cil­i­ty. This will pro­vide safe con­di­tions for the tur­tle hatch­lings, who will then be re­leased in­to the seas, im­prov­ing their sur­vival rates.

"More de­tails about the tur­tle hatch­ery will be an­nounced in com­ing months," Dar­low said. "At­lantic is very ea­ger to part­ner with the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust to make this hatch­ery a re­al­i­ty."

At­lantic will al­so spon­sor the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust's in­tro­duc­tion of GPS tech­nol­o­gy for the geo-tag­ging for the 2014 sea­son. At­lantic will spon­sor ten tur­tles this sea­son.

"This pi­lot group of tur­tles will help us un­der­stand the tur­tles' mi­gra­to­ry pat­terns from a glob­al per­spec­tive," Dar­low said. "This da­ta will be used to de­vel­op con­ser­va­tion pro­grammes that are even more ef­fec­tive."

Oth­er speak­ers at the Tur­tle Sea­son open­ing event in­clud­ed Sen­a­tor the Hon Gan­ga Singh, Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources; and Dr Al­lan Bachan, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust.

The Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust (TVT) is an NGO which works with com­mu­ni­ty groups to con­serve sea tur­tles and pro­tect their nest­ing beach­es. At­lantic's an­nu­al spon­sor­ship of the TVT's Na­tion­al Sea Tur­tle Tag­ging and Mon­i­tor­ing Pro­gramme is one of sev­er­al ini­tia­tives fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the LNG com­pa­ny that fo­cus on build­ing Sus­tain­abil­i­ty in T&T. The Tag­ging and Mon­i­tor­ing Pro­gramme gath­ers in­for­ma­tion about the pop­u­la­tion of nest­ing leatherbacks, hawks­bill and green tur­tles in T&T; and about the res­i­dent pop­u­la­tion of hawks­bill and green tur­tles for­ag­ing on the reefs and sea grass beds around To­ba­go. The da­ta gath­ered con­tributes to the over­all man­age­ment of sea tur­tles lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly.

At­lantic's part­ner­ships with NGOs fa­cil­i­tate en­er­gy skills train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, agri-en­tre­pre­neur­ship, com­mu­ni­ty and youth de­vel­op­ment through sports and ed­u­ca­tion and youth lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment.

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