18 Feb 2013

SPREP to track migration of 15,000 sea turtles

5:40 am on 18 February 2013

The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, or SPREP, is asking for Pacific people to help track the migratory paths of over 15,000 sea turtles.

The turtle database officer for SPREP, Catherine Siota' is asking that people who come across turtles with a tag on their flipper to report it to their natural environment of fisheries department.

Ms Siota says SPREP has been tagging turtles for over 15 years, but they still don't know enough about them.

"We have received little information from the Pacific countries, but we have done a lot of tagging. So we need people to report if they seen or caught any turtles to report the tag numbers to us."

Catherine Siota says the information provided will help the organisation estimate the population of endangered sea turtles and their nesting and foraging habits.