Space‐use patterns of green turtles in industrial coastal foraging habitat: Challenges and opportunities for informing management with a large satellite tracking dataset

Abstract

1. Increasing overlap between anthropogenic activities and wildlife can lead to problematic human-wildlife interactions. To manage these, an understanding of animal space-use patterns, with sufficient temporal and spatial detail is required.Satellite telemetry can provide such detailed data; however, the cost of tracking units places a significant limitation on sample size.2. Satellite tracks for 72 green turtles were consolidated through collaboration with multiple entities over 8 years at seven sites within a large industrial port contributing to an ecological monitoring initiative to minimize impacts of planned developments.3. This study aims to determine the minimum number of satellite-tracked green turtles required to represent spatial distribution patterns in the foraging ground and to evaluate factors underpinning differences in distribution and site fidelity metrics to inform appropriate management strategies.4. An autocorrelated kernel density estimator was used to construct 95% utilization distributions for individual turtles during each calendar season. Percentage overlap between pairs of seasonal utilization distributions was calculated as a measure of short-term site fidelity. Mechanistic range shift analysis was applied to detect significant deviations from range residency behaviour. 5. Green turtles exhibited spatially confined ranges and remained faithful to their foraging area for periods of up to 260 days. Range size was significantly different between microhabitats and study years. Only 16 individuals (22% of tracked turtles) performed significant range shifts, indicating that occupied areas represent important habitats, and most turtles are unlikely to adjust their spaceuse in response to anthropogenic or natural disturbances. 6. Although this dataset represents an atypically large sample of satellite tracked individuals, representative data were obtained at only two key sites.

Object Tracking Based on Satellite Videos: A Literature Review

“…Nevertheless, some other satellite applications are not discussed in the following sections but are only listed here because of little published data on the specific applications. These applications include but are not limited to wild animal tracking [39], cloud tracking, tree defoliation tracking [40], low-salinity pool tracking [41], deep convective cloud tracking [42], crop phenology tracking [43], etc. Furthermore, traffic object tracking is one of most interest within the field of satellite video-based visual tracking due to its promising application potential and performance.…”

Comparing acoustic and satellite telemetry: an analysis quantifying the space use of Chelonia mydas in Bimini, Bahamas

“…The approximate costs associated with projects using acoustic and satellite telemetry were compared across several scenarios, which considered two different tracking durations (6 months and 12 months), four sample sizes (1, 5, 10 and 20 tracked individuals), and acoustic (V13) and satellite (Argos) transmitters. While not used in our study, we also included the costs associated with Argos-linked Fastloc-GPS, as we recognize that the use of these transmitters in tracking studies is growing [35,89]. Expenses related to capturing turtles for transmitter application, such as boat fuel, personnel time and travel/lodging at a field site, were not included in the cost analysis, since these expenses were similar regardless of whether satellite or acoustic transmitters were being applied.…”

Satellite tracking reveals sex-specific migration distance in green turtles ( Chelonia mydas )

“…It has been hypothesized that if males breed more frequently than females, then foraging closer to the breeding grounds may confer fitness benefits by both maximizing mating opportunities and optimizing travel costs [11]. In green turtles ( Chelonia mydas ), evidence from both population censusing and tracking studies suggest that the sexes use similar foraging habitats [12,13]. However, as few male green turtles have successfully been tracked from breeding sites to foraging grounds, it remains uncertain whether males of this species choose foraging grounds closer to breeding sites [12,14,15].…”