- To actively protect sea turtles on their nesting beaches, it is essential to obtain knowledge about trends in abundance. The way sea turtles live makes it extremely difficult to identify how many individuals there are in a population at any point in time. Due to practical problems, given their entirely marine life with limited visibility and great oceanic dispersal, counting males or juveniles is currently quite difficult and imprecise. Counting females and nests on beaches during the nesting season is the best feasible but still imperfect method, since only an unknown portion of adult females nest every season. It is impossible to know the real number of females in the population by merely counting females and nests in a given year. The number of nesting females can vary greatly from year to year and it is therefore advisable to count them incessantly in subsequent years. Variations in nesting females between years can be independent of general population fluctuations and be due to chance or (unknown) environmental factors. Since the work has to be done at night and the majority of individuals must be marked and recaptured in order to be effective, carrying out censuses of females is complex. Yearly censuses of nests is suggested as the most effective method and the best way to obtain knowledge about the abundance of individuals in a population, their numerical development over time, the conservation status of the population and the effectiveness of conservation measures. The capture frequency of females and poached nests on beaches also requires counting the numbers involved.
Deutsches Urheberrecht