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First Loggerhead of Season Tagged for Tracking
SCCF’s sea turtle team encountered Lila, an adult female loggerhead (Caretta caretta) sea turtle, nesting on the west end of Sanibel Island in the early morning hours of May 19.
This was the first time encountering her on Sanibel, as she had no indication of being previously tagged with forms of identification, such as a PIT or flipper tag. She is the first of the season to be satellite tagged. Lila’s tag was generously sponsored by Norman Robertson.
Her tag is now active on the SCCF Sea Turtle Tracking Portal, which launched last nesting season and tracked five loggerheads.
“A lot of the research on sea turtles is conducted while they’re nesting because they’re much easier to access on beaches, but since they spend most of their lives at sea, there is still so much we don’t know,” said SCCF Coastal Wildlife Director Kelly Sloan. “Satellite tags provide location data for the turtles even when they aren’t observed again on the nesting beach, which allows us to track their movements at sea.”