The tale of the sea turtle flipper tagging technique, a global environmental impact assessment

Abstract

Although sea turtle flipper tagging is a tenet field technique generating irreplaceable scientific data worldwide since the inception of sea turtle conservation in 1920s along the Great Barrier Reef, the procedure was reported to trigger outbreaks of sea turtle fibropapillomatosis (FP) in 2018. This global environmental impact assessment performed during 2020–2023 meta‐analyzed three impacts on sea turtles health and conservation of the presence of visible flipper tags: a risk of clinical expression of FP lesions at the tag insertion point, a deterrent effect of the presence of flipper tags on sea turtle fishing, and a risk of entanglement of sea turtles in fishing gears. This essay concluded that the risk of expression of a FP lesion at the flipper tag insertion point is most probably correlated to a direct inoculation of ChHV5 via infected tagging equipment, and that the risk of entanglement in fishing gears can be mitigated by the choice of metallic flipper tags over plastic flipper tags. This essay also strongly recalls the sea turtle flipper tagging technique represents a remedy to knowledge gaps relevant to climate velocity research and can be a deterrent on sea turtle fishing in a frame of strong partnerships with indigenous people, independently of communities' socio‐cultural backgrounds.