A Worldwide Travel Guide to Sea Turtles

Caribbean Islands

61 A STRING of islands arcing from Cuba, just 90 miles south of Florida, to the northern coast of South America rings clear, blue waters known as the Caribbean Sea. Th se islands include the Cayman Islands , Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, Puerto Rico, the British and US Virgin Islands, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, Grenada, Curaçao, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Montserrat, Saba, St. Barthélemy, St. Eustatius, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Maarten, St. Martin, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. In all, this sea contains more than 7,000 islands, islets, reefs, and cays. Collectively they are known as the Greater Antilles —which includes Cuba, Haiti/Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica and represents more than 90 percent of the total landmass—and the Lesser Antilles. Some are flat and primarily of coral reef origin, while others have a volcanic history and the rugged mountains to prove it. TheCaribbean Sea covers more than a million square miles, bordered by the North and South Atlantic Oceans to the north and east, South America to the south, and Central America, Mexico, and the Gulf of Mexico to the west and north. Its name comes from the Caribe, an ethnic group living here when Europeans arrived. Th se early Europeans documented vast populations of sea turtles in the Caribbean, flotil as of turtles so dense that they hindered ship movement and made it impossible to catch fish with nets. Sailors talked of so many turtles it looked as if a person could walk across the water on them. Th se were some of the largest breeding populations in the world, but most have disappeared. When the Cayman Islands were colonized in the 1600s, for example, they likely contained the largest nesting population of green sea turtles in the greater Caribbean basin. Adult turtles and eggs proved to be too-easily exploited resources, and by the early 1800s, turtle fishers could no longer catch turtles in the Cayman area at all. Today, the main threats to Caribbean sea turtles include accidental capture in fishing gear, degradation of coral reef and seagrass habitat, Caribbean Islands 62 Caribbean Islands pollution, marine debris, and development. In addition, a regulated but largely unmanaged harvest of breeding-age adults continues in some countries. For small, remnant populations, the take of only a few nesting females each year can have an enormous effect. Leatherback, loggerhead, green, olive ridley, Kemp’s ridley, and hawksbill sea turtles all spend time in some part of the Caribbean during at least some stage of their lives. • Cayman Islands Sea Turtle Farming A sea turtle farm has operated in the Cayman Islands since the 1970s, raising green sea turtles for meat and products and releasing some hatchlings and yearlings in an attempt to boost the local wild population. The Cayman Turtle Farm has been the subject of much controversy, which you can read about in the Captive Encounters section. of Sea Turtle Conservation Biographer Frederick Rowe Davis called biologist Archie Carr“the man who saved sea turtles,”and aptly so. Starting in the 1950s, Carr championed sea turtles, and his work created a conservation ethic and approach that underlie almost every effort currently under way. A herpetologist, Carr contributed greatly to the basic knowledge of sea turtle biology and natural history; he published more than 100 scientific paper , many on the ecology and migrations of sea turtles; and he published many popular and award-winning nature books as well as biology books, including The Reptiles, The Land and Wildlife of Africa, The Everglades, Sea Turtles: So Excellent a Fishe, The Windward Road, High Jungles and Low, Ulendo: Travels of a Naturalist in and out of Africa, and A Naturalist in Florida: A Celebration of Eden. The Windward Road inspired the founding of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, now the Sea Turtle Conservancy (STC), in 1959. STC has supported hundreds of research projects on the biology and conservation of sea turtles, advocates for sea turtle conservation and protection, and monitors and protects a number of high-density nesting beaches. Born June 16, 1909, in Mobile, Alabama, Carr grew up with a love of nature. His father was a Presbyterian minister; and his mother, a piano teacher. He received a PhD in zoology in 1937 from the University of Florida and taught and mentored students there for more than 50 years. In the 1950s, he...