Seventeen immature green turtles Chelonia mydas were tracked concurrently by automated ultrasonic receivers at a coral reef off North-Eastern Australia (September-December 2010, 16. 4°S, 145. 6°E). The majority (n = 11) were tracked for the entire 100-day study, the remainder for 23-85 days. Detection data aggregated at 30-min intervals produced median 6. 5-35 daily locations for individual turtles. Home range areas (95 % utilisation distribution) were ≤1 km2, x̄ ± SD = 0. 74 km2 ± 0. 159. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first home range estimates for C. mydas foraging at offshore tropical reefs. The findings are important for conservation in revealing near-continuous presence of the same individuals within a small geographic area. Time between detections was very short (median <3 min) demonstrating passive ultrasonic technology can track multiple turtles in a foraging environment with higher temporal resolution than typically achieved by satellite tracking. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
CITATION STYLE
Hazel, J., Hamann, M., & Lawler, I. R. (2013). Home range of immature green turtles tracked at an offshore tropical reef using automated passive acoustic technology. Marine Biology, 160(3), 617–627. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-012-2117-0
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