Results & Progress - 2002/03
Main Project
Results
so far...
Please note that presentation
of data here
does not constitute
publication and that we retain
all intellectual
property rights.
Beach census and
turtle numbers
Here is the latest data we have on the number of
turtles who have
come up onto the beach to nest this season.
The bars show the number of turtles
which have
come to Las Baulas in the week beginning on
the date indicated.
Below is a summary of the turtle numbers
per week we found in the 2001/02 season.
Turtle Calendar
This is our "Turtle
Calendar", it shows
day by day which turtles came up and whether they
nested or not.
It has a 9 day week because that's the average
interval between
nestings for an individual turtle. The ID of the
turtle appears
in bold the first time we saw her. If we could not
identify the
turtle, it is designated "Unknown". ?Question marks?
around the turtle's number means that we are not certain that
she nested because we didn't see the eggs. If the turtle's ID
number has <brackets> around it, this means that she did
not nest. Many of the unknown turtles have brackets
around them
because they crawled up onto the beach, turned around and went
back into the water without nesting. Even if we
didn't see her,
we can tell this from finding the tracks after the turtle has
gone. When possible, we try to identify what might have caused
the turtle to have turned around without nesting (e.g. she ran
into a piece of wood, the sand was not suitable,
human disturbance
etc.)
Time of
Activity
These graphs show the time of night that we saw
turtles on the beach, in relation to the time and
height of the
high tide. The red diamond shows the time of night
that we first
saw that particular turtle, the blue line and grey
triangles shows
what time and height the tide was that night. This information
is useful to help understand the relationship between nesting
activity and tide cycles, it also help us to plan the
most important
times to be on the beach at night.
