Priorities for Mediterranean marine turtle conservation and management in the face of climate change.

As climate-related impacts threaten marine biodiversity globally, it is important to adjust conservation efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. Translating scientific knowledge into practical management, however, is often complicated due to resource, economic and policy constraints, generating a knowledge-action gap. To develop potential solutions for marine turtle conservation, we explored the perceptions of key actors across 18 countries in the Mediterranean. These actors evaluated their perceived relative importance of 19 adaptation and mitigation measures that could safeguard marine turtles from climate change. Of importance, despite differences in expertise, experience and focal country, the perceptions of researchers and management practitioners largely converged with respect to prioritizing adaptation and mitigation measures. Climate change was considered to have the greatest impacts on offspring sex ratios and suitable nesting sites. The most viable adaptation/mitigation measures were considered to be reducing other pressures that act in parallel to climate change. Ecological effectiveness represented a key determinant for implementing proposed measures, followed by practical applicability, financial cost, and societal cost. This convergence in opinions across actors likely reflects long-standing initiatives in the Mediterranean region towards supporting knowledge exchange in marine turtle conservation. Our results provide important guidance on how to prioritize measures that incorporate climate change in decision-making processes related to the current and future management and protection of marine turtles at the ocean-basin scale, and could be used to guide decisions in other regions globally. Importantly, this study demonstrates a successful example of how interactive processes can be used to fill the knowledge-action gap between research and management.

Satellite-tracking dataset of loggerhead sea turtles tracked from western Mediterranean.

We provide the raw data of 44 satellite-tracked loggerhead sea turtles from different life-stages collected between 2016 and 2018. Depending on life-stage and tag availability a different satellite tag was attached to the loggerhead carapace. Location data were collected using the Argos system. We made publically available for the first time in the Mediterranean: (i) the satellite-tracking data for 17 one-year-aged post-hatchlings of loggerhead sea turtle came from two nests laid on the Mediterranean Spanish coast; (ii) the satellite-tracking data for 4 loggerhead nesting females collected from nesting events occurred on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Besides, another 23 juvenile and adult loggerhead sea turtles were monitored and their data were made also available. Our dataset provide the turtle identity name or number, the date and coordinates of the location data, and the Argos location class associated. Our data contribute to the knowledge about the spatial use of the loggerhead sea turtle in the Mediterranean Sea and could be used in further analysis regarding habitat use and dispersal of this species in the Mediterranean Sea. Specially, nesting females and post-hatchlings data contribute to shed light about these life-stages related to nesting events out of the usual nesting range in the western Mediterranean, for which data still remains scarce. Also, data could be compared to further similar research in satellite-tracking loggerhead sea turtles in the Mediterranean basin.