kélonia     The Observatory of Marine Turtles constellation.tif
Kélonia



Monitoring The Marine Turtles Of The Iles Eparses




Glorieuses Islands


Europa Island


 In 1975 staff of the Farm Corail, now Kelonia, joined staff from IFREMER in a long term project to monitor the nesting populations of turtles on the islands of Europa, Tromelin, Juan de Nova and the Glorious Islands.

Every day nesting tracks are counted by resident police or meteorologists and all results are entered into the IFREMER/ Kelonia data base. Marine turtles are long lived animals and long term monitoring programmes are necessary to understand their reproductive biology.

Ifremer web-site
TAAF web-site



GLOBAL WARMING

K

Turtle’s nest with a thermometer
to study incubation temperature
and hatchling survival on Tromelin.
© Kélonia/S.Ciccione

Marine turtles are sensitive to climate change because of their biological characteristics (temperature dependent sex determination, nesting beaches with a high risk of sea level rising due to global warming). Kélonia and IFREMER launched a monitoring programme on incubation temperature and hatchling production in 2008 on Mohéli and Eparses Islands.



PUBLICATIONS

Reproductive seasonality and trend
of Chelonia mydas in the southwestern Indian ocean, a 20 year study based on trak counts.
Lauret-stepler M., Bourjea J., Roos D., Pelletier D., Ryan PG., Ciccione S., Grisel H.
(2007) (accepted) Endangered Species Research. 

Kélonia, the observatory of marine turtles
Saint-Leu, La Réunion, France