Adaptation to Climate change in marine Turtles

Sex ratios - baselines and adaptation measures

Group outputs

This task group will ideally compile and make available a review of the known sex ratios for hatchling, juvenile and adult turtles. These data will be fed into an online database (potentially to be hosted at www.seaturtle.org) and managed by Dr Dave Owens.

In addition, temperature data that have been collected for nesting beaches using data loggers will be collated and use to model additional likely sex ratios for a variety of nesting beaches. Julianne Baker, in addition to other WWF staff and task group members will produce a temperature monitoring protocol that can be used to standardise the types and methods of data collection and to contribute to a monitoring network that should be set up over a variety of sites (suggest 40 at this time) and nesting rookeries.

In addition, this task group should incorporate a component of modelling of existing sex ratios with real climate data and lowest resolution possible climate forecasts to model what could happen to sex ratios in existing nesting areas. These data can be fed into management strategies and combined with suggested adaptation approaches from this task group to form a series of draft adaptation measures to be tested in the field.

This task group should also support the continued sampling of turtles both at the nesting beach and in the water to further clarify likely primary and secondary sex ratios of various populations of various species of marine turtles.