Seasonality of Sea Turtle Nesting

Understanding the key sea turtle nesting periods allows us to identify times of year when it is necessary to carefully manage activities at the prime nesting areas and helps us to understand the best times to observe nesting turtles or possibly even emerging hatchlings. To improve our understanding of seasonality, high-density nesting islands were visited monthly, and a subset of islands with lower nesting densities was surveyed every other month.

These frequent visits to islands allowed us to document the start of nesting and the gradual decline in nesting at the end of the season for both species. Additionally, we were able to show the peak nesting period. Hawksbill nesting occurred between March and September, with peak density in June. For Green turtles, the season spans from April to early December, with peak nesting in August. These seasons align roughly with previously published seasonality for the TRS area (Shimada et al., 2021).

Seasonality data can also allow us to create accumulation curves for each species. As has been shown by other studies, the distribution of nesting across the year tends to be relatively stable from year to year. These accumulation curves enable us to make reliable extrapolations of total nesting activity from incomplete or early-year data.