This September, Suzie the adult female green turtle and first Turks and Caicos Islands turtle to be fitted with a satellite transmitter tag, migrated over 950 km and visited three UK Overseas Territories in the Caribbean. Suzie was fitted with the tag and released at the end of June earlier this year, after which she spent two months in TCI waters. She started her migration on the 1st of September when she then swam over 820 km straight to the British Virgin Islands (BVI), before swimming a 130 km loop to Anguilla, her third consecutive UK Overseas Territory.

The tag was fitted onto Suzie's shell by the Turks and Caicos Islands Turtle Project, a collaborative initiative between the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR) and the School for Field Studies (SFS) in TCI, and the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and the University of Exeter in the UK. The project is carrying out research into the turtle populations and turtle fishery in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), and the satellite tagging work aims to reveal the full ranges of the turtle populations found there.

"Suzie's journey is a remarkable first. She was the first turtle ever to be fitted with a satellite tag in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and her journey has told us for the first time that three of the UK Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, hundreds of kilometres apart, share green turtle populations," said Peter Richardson, MCS Biodiversity Programme Manager, "We would never have predicted that she would visit three UK Territories in a row without stopping at any of the other countries on the way. Suzie has revealed that each of these Territories has a responsibility to look after their shared turtle resource."

Each of the territories takes a different approach to the management of their turtle fisheries. The Turks and Caicos Islands' laws prohibit the take of nesting females and their eggs on the nesting beaches, but allow the capture at sea of any turtle with a shell over 20 inches at any time of the year. In the BVI, the laws prohibit the take of nesting females and their eggs on nesting beaches, but allow the capture at sea of green turtles with shells over 24 inches and hawksbill turtles with shells over 15 inches in length, but only during an open season from December to March. The Government of Anguilla, however, imposed a 15-year, temporary ban on all turtle fishing in 2005 in order to allow their turtle populations to recover.

"Suzie was caught and named by fishermen in South Caicos, the home of fishing in TCI," said Wesley Clerveaux, Director of the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources in TCI, "Our project officers on the island are putting up the maps of Suzie's journey on walls and notice boards each day and doing a great job of keeping the South Caicos locals informed. They are very interested and will stop our officers in the street to ask 'Where Suzie at now?'".

After spending the first 4 days of October in Anguilla waters, Suzie continued to migrate southwards and yesterday she arrived in the shallow inshore waters off the west coast of Barbuda. Suzie's tag only transmits when she surfaces to breath, and satellites orbiting in space receive the signals and calculate her location. The Turks and Caicos Islands Turtle Project team hope to tag a total of six turtles in TCI and will track their migrations remotely via the internet using seaturtle.org's ground-breaking programme known as STAT. STAT communicates with the satellite system to plot online maps of the turtles movements each day. The daily maps and pictures of Suzie can be viewed online by anyone with internet access at www.mcsuk.org.

The satellite tags used by the Turks and Caicos Islands Turtle Project were funded by People's Trust for Endangered Species and the British Chelonia Group. Ends

For more information, maps and photographs, please contact:
Peter Richardson, Biodiversity Programme Manager, Marine Conservation Society (MCS), UK. Tel: +44 (0)1989 566017, +44 (0)7793 118383.
E-mail: peter@mcsuk.org