A preliminary home-range analysis of loggerhead sea turtles released in Virginia, USA

About

We conducted a home-range analysis on 23 loggerheads that the Virginia Aquarium has tracked since 2011. Of the 23 - 17 were rehabilitated and six were wild caught. All rehabilitated animals were released in Virginia, 13 were released in the Atlantic Ocean, six from beaches located in Virginia Beach, and five from Chesapeake Bay beaches. Three wild caught loggerheads were captured using a dip net and released approximately 115km offshore of Virginia Beach, VA. Two wild caught turtles were recovered from pound net heads on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and released near their recovery locations. The remaining wild caught turtle was captured in netted swimming enclosure on the James River. We released 12 loggerheads May-June, five July-August, five September-October, and one in November. Location data collection periods ranged from 20 to 299 days. All transmitters were applied to the second and/or third vertebral scutes using Sita Anchor-Fix™ epoxy. We deployed six Sea Mammal Research Unit and eight Wildlife Computers tags. We applied the Movebank (http://www.movebank.org) Douglas filtering algorithm to all records and set the parameters to select the records with the best accuracy within 24 hour time frames. Location points collected in the first 48 hours post-release were removed.