The Green sea turtle (Chelonia my das); collection, incubation and hatching of eggs from natural rookeries

Abstract

In the absence of existing farm stocks to draw on, a pioneer farm must obtain its foundation material from the wild, but with as little disturbance to wild populations as possible.This paper describes the collection in 1971–73, with the approval of the appropriate authorities, of 188,568 eggs of the Green sea turtle from beaches on Ascension Island, Guyana, Surinam and Costa Rica for hatching at the Mariculture Ltd farm on Grand Cayman Island, BWI. Almost all of these eggs came from nests doomed by tidal washout or volcanic sand so that the loss of hatchlings to the wild was small in comparison with the number of eggs collected.