The main nesting area for loggerhead turtles in the eastern Atlantic is in the Cape Verde Islands, largely restricted to the island of Boa Vista. Extensive monitoring demonstrated a globally significant population for the species despite a sustained high level of anthropogenic take of nesting females for local consumption. Through an extensive stratified monitoring program across the island in the seasons 2007-2009, we estimated a total of 13 955, 12 028 and 19 950 clutches in the 3 years, respectively. These values indicate that the mean number of nesting females averaged 3700. Considering that a female breed, on average, every 2.4 years, we estimate that the overall number of adult females in the population during these three seasons was 8900. These levels are much higher than those suggested in previous studies which were more constrained in spatial coverage. Our findings indicate that Cape Verde hosts the third largest nesting aggregation for this species in the world after the south-eastern US and Oman, with some sites having a particularly high density of nests, facilitating targeted monitoring and conservation. Consumption of sea turtle meat is a traditional practice in Cape Verde that continues despite national sea turtle protection laws. We estimated that 36, 18 and 5% of nesting females were harvested in the 3 years of the study, respectively. Increasing beach protection and monitoring, ongoing educational programs and cooperative projects with local communities are urgently needed to further safeguard the only major loggerhead nesting aggregation in the eastern Atlantic.
The Cape Verde nesting population of loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) is the third largest population of this species in the world. For conservation purposes, it is essential to determine how these reptiles respond to different types of anthropogenic contaminants. We evaluated the presence of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the plasma of adult nesting loggerheads from Boa Vista Island, Cape Verde, and studied the effects of the contaminants on the health status of the turtles using hematological and biochemical parameters. All turtles had detectable levels of non-dioxin like PCBs, whereas dioxin-like congeners (DL-PCBs) were detected in only 30% of the turtles. Packed cell volume decreased with higher concentrations of PCBs, which suggests that PCB exposure could result in anemia in sea turtles. In addition, a negative association between some OCPs and white blood cells (WBC) and thrombocyte estimate was noted. The DDT-metabolite, p,p'-DDE was negatively correlated with the Na/K ratio and, additionally, a number of correlations between certain PAHs and electrolyte balances were found, which suggest that exposure to these environmental contaminants could affect the kidneys and salt glands in sea turtles. Additionally, several correlations were observed between these environmental pollutants (OCPs and PAHs) and enzyme activity (GGT, ALT, ALP and amylase) and serum protein levels, pointing to the possibility that these contaminants could induce adverse metabolic effects in sea turtles. Our results indicate that anthropogenic pollutants are present in the Cape Verde loggerhead turtle nesting population and could exert negative effects on several health parameters. Because of the importance of this loggerhead nesting population, protective regulations at national and international levels as well as international action are necessary for assuring the conservation of this population.
We consider the 3D Gross-Pitaevskii equation i∂tψ + ∆ψ + (1 − |ψ| 2 )ψ = 0 for ψ : R × R 3 → C and construct traveling waves solutions to this equation. These are solutions of the form ψ(t, x) = u(x 1 , x 2 , x 3 − Ct) with a velocity C of order ε| log ε| for a small parameter ε > 0. We build two different types of solutions. For the first type, the functions u have a zero-set (vortex set) close to an union of n helices for n ≥ 2 and near these helices u has degree 1. For the second type, the functions u have a vortex filament of degree −1 near the vertical axis e 3 and n ≥ 4 vortex filaments of degree +1 near helices whose axis is e 3 . In both cases the helices are at a distance of order 1/(ε | log ε|) from the axis and are solutions to the Klein-Majda-Damodaran system, supposed to describe the evolution of nearly parallel vortex filaments in ideal fluids. Analogous solutions have been constructed recently by the authors for the stationary Gross-Pitaevskii equation, namely the Ginzburg-Landau equation. To prove the existence of these solutions we use the Lyapunov-Schmidt method and a subtle separation between even and odd Fourier modes of the error of a suitable approximation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.