‘Eye in the sky’: Off-the-shelf unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) highlights exposure of marine turtles to floating litter (FML) in nearshore waters of Mayo Bay, Philippines

Abreo, Neil Angelo S.; Aurelio, Remie M.; Kobayashi, Vladimer; Thompson, K. F.

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114489

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Fine-scale spatial data of internesting turtle behavior can be used to inform targeted management and conservation efforts, particularly when considering the diverse impacts that various threats may have on turtles based on their behavior and overlap with a given threat. For example, turtles that spend more time at the surface may be at higher risk of vessel strikes (Shimada et al, 2017;Fuentes et al, 2021), of inhaling airborne pollutants (Jernelv, 2010) or encountering floating debris (Gregory, 2009;Duncan et al, 2017;Abreo et al, 2023). In contrast, when turtles are at the bottom of the ocean, they may be more susceptible as bycatch to trawling fishing vessels (Brewer et al, 2006;Kumar and Deepthi, 2006) and various bottom-set fishing gear (Wallace et al, 2010b), as well as pollution that accumulates on the seafloor (Putman et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decoding the internesting movements of marine turtles using a fine-scale behavioral state approach

Santos,

Cullen,

Vieira

et al. 2023

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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IntroductionAn understanding of animal behavior is critical to determine their ecological role and to inform conservation efforts. However, observing hidden behaviors can be challenging, especially for animals that spend most of their time underwater. Animal-borne devices are valuable tools to estimate hidden behavioral states.MethodsWe investigated the fine-scale behavior of internesting hawksbill turtles using the mixed-membership method for movement (M4) which integrated dive variables with spatial components and estimated latent behavioral states.ResultsFive latent behavioral states were identified: 1) pre-nesting, 2) transit, 3) quiescence, and 4) area restricted search within and 5) near the residence of turtles. The last three states associated with a residency period, showed lower activity levels. Notably, when compared to other behaviors the pre-nesting exhibited shallower and remarkably long dives of up to 292 minutes. We noted high fidelity to residence core areas and nesting beaches, within and between nesting seasons, with residence areas decreasing within a season.DiscussionThe latent behaviors identified provide the most detailed breakdown of turtle movement behaviors during the internesting period to date, providing valuable insights into their ecology and behavior. This information can inform marine turtle conservation and management efforts since utilization distributions of individual behavioral states can be used to determine spatially-explicit susceptibility of turtles to various threats based on their behavior. The analyses of utilization distribution revealed a minimal overlap with existing marine protected areas (0.4%), and we show how a new proposal would expand protection to 30%. In short, this study provides valuable guidance for conservation and management of internesting marine turtles at a fine spatiotemporal resolution and can be used to enhance national action plans for endangered species, including the expansion of existing Marine Protected Areas. By flexibly incorporating biologically informative parameters, this approach can be used to study behavior outside of the hawksbill breeding season or even beyond this species.

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