Marine Megafauna and Charismatic Vertebrate Species

Is climate change modifying the behavior of sea turtles? The particular case of the loggerhead turtle in the Alboran Sea

“…It is of interest that although the first loggerhead turtle nesting site detected in the Iberian Peninsula was found on the Andalusian coast (Tomaś et al, 2002;Baéz et al, 2021a), located proximate to the Alboran Sea border (in a broader biogeographical context, it might be considered part of the Alboran Sea), and despite the rise of sporadic nesting phenomena across the western Mediterranean, only four instances of loggerhead turtle nestings have been documented in or in close proximity to the Alboran Sea: Vera (Almerıá) on July 27, 2001; Pulpi (Almerıá) on July 17, 2015; Fuengirola (Maĺaga) on August 4, 2020; and Marbella (Maĺaga) on July 8 and Mojacar (Almerıá) on 29 August 2023 (Figure 1). There are no records of such nesting sites on the coast of Morocco (Baéz et al, 2021a).…”