Densities and drivers of sea turtle populations across Pacific coral reef ecosystems.

ABSTRACT

Sea turtle populations are often assessed at the regional to sub-basin scale from discrete indices of nesting abundance. While this may be practical and sometimes effective, widespread in-water surveys may enhance assessments by including additional demographics, locations, and revealing emerging population trends. Here, we describe sea turtle observations from 13 years of towed-diver surveys across 53 coral islands, atolls, and reefs in the Central, West, and South Pacific. These surveys covered more than 7,300 linear km, and observed more than 3,400 green (Chelonia mydas) and hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) sea turtles. From these data, we estimated sea turtle densities, described trends across space and time, and modelled the influence of environmental and anthropogenic drivers. Both species were patchily distributed across spatial scales, and green turtles were 11 times more abundant than hawksbills. The Pacific Remote Island Areas had the highest densities of greens (3.62 turtles km-1, Jarvis Island), while American Samoa had the most hawksbills (0.12 turtles km-1, Ta'u Island). The Hawaiian Islands had the lowest turtle densities (island ave = 0.07 turtles km-1) yet the highest annual population growth (µ = 0.08, σ = 0.22), suggesting extensive management protections can yield positive conservation results. Densities peaked at 27.5°C SST, in areas of high productivity and low human impact, and were consistent with patterns of historic overexploitation. Though such intensive surveys have great value, they are logistically demanding and therefore have an uncertain budget and programmatic future. We hope the methods we described here may be applied to future comparatively low-cost surveys either with autonomous vehicles or with environmental DNA.