Loggerhead sea turtle with a satellite transmitter attached to the carapace
Each year, more than 2,500 loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) are accidentally caught in fishing nets in the Croatian waters of the northern Adriatic Sea, and several thousands more in Italian and Slovenian fisheries. Northern Adriatic is particularly important wintering and feeding area for the population nesting in the Mediterranean Basin. Over several years, the Blue World Institute has helped develop satellite tracking projects and undertaken fieldwork of the loggerhead sea turtles in the Adriatic Sea. The first sea turtle tracked by the Blue World Institute was tagged in the afternoon on 7th September 2006. The sea turtle was named “Calypso” after the fishing boat that accidentally caught her on 24th June 2006, as she swam near the island of Lošinj. With the satellite transmitter attached to the carapace, she was later released with great interest from local and foreign media. Since then, the Blue World Institute has been involved in many projects tracking turtles, including the joint Italian-Croatian-Slovenian AdriaWatch project and the IPA-CBC NETCET project. As satellite tracking is costly, in our new EU funded LIFE Euroturtles project, we will be applying novel tags we will develop that will be based on GSM technology used in mobile phones. Satellite tracking data of marine turtles we tagged can be found here!
