Southern Great Barrier Reef Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Stock: Consequences of Local Sex-Biased Harvesting

Abstract

Abstract The green turtle (Chelonia mydas) is a marine species with a broad pantropical distribution (Bowen et al. 1992) and is the most abundant large herbivore in marine ecosystems (Bjorndal et al. 2000). The southern Great Barrier Reef (sGBR) green turtle stock is one of the most important breeding populations of green turtles in the western South Pacific region (FitzSimmons et al. 1997) with benthic foraging grounds in Australian, Indonesian, Papua New Guinean, Coral Sea, and New Caledonian waters (Limpus et al. 1992). The Great Barrier Reef and coastal Queensland benthic habitat component of this stock includes a spatially disjunct metapopulation with foraging grounds that span 12° latitude and 1800 km with foraging grounds that range from tropical waters in the northern Great Barrier Reef (nGBR) to warm temperate waters in southern coastal Queensland (Figure 30.1) (Chaloupka 2002a). Pelagic juveniles recruit to these benthic habitat foraging grounds after pelagic development in the western South Pacific Ocean (Limpus and Chaloupka 1997).