The nesting population and spatial distribution of loggerhead sea turtle nests on Dalaman Beach, Turkey

Abstract

Sea turtles are one of the examples for a species diminishing in numbers due to degradation ofthe living and nesting habitats, incidental catches and pollution. Two species of marine turtle,Chelonia mydas (green turtle) and Caretta caretta (loggerhead turtle), are known to nest in theMediterranean (Groombridge 1990). The nesting sites of sea turtles are being heavily used anddestroyed by people especially during the last 25-30 years. The major nesting beachesidentified for C. caretta were in Greece and Turkey, with smaller numbers recorded in Cyprus,Libya, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Israel and Italy (Broderick et al. 2002).Dalaman beach is one of 13 key Turkish nesting sites for loggerhead turtles. Assessing thepopulation size of sea turtles is a difficult task, particularly in those species that occupydifferent habitats during their life cycle and migrate large distances (Broderick et al. 2002). In1988, a total of 69 nests, 73 nests in 1997 and 69 nests in 1998 were recorded (Baran andKasparek 1989, Yerli and Demirayak 1996, Yerli and Canbolat 1998). We aimed to find outthe population size of the sea turtles nesting on Dalaman beach, which was not investigatedpreviously on a continuous basis