Special Edition Newsletter Spring 2012
What is the Sargasso Sea?


100 million years of turtles...


Current Projects and Progress


Academic and Professional Development

Save A Turtle

Marine turtles have swum in the world’s oceans for over 100 million years. Many species migrate for thousands of miles, even crossing entire oceans. Six of the seven marine turtle species are endangered or critically endangered.
Marine Turtles Are Endangered By Human Activities
Entanglement in floating ropes and fishing gear;
Accidental capture (bycatch) in nets;
Motorboats and ocean trash;
Development and polluting of their nesting beaches and feeding grounds; and
Hunting and poaching for their shells, meat and eggs.
How You Can Help the Turtles
To give to BTP click here (Link required)or contact Lynda Johnson at +1 441 299-2326, or
Did You Know…
For more than four decades, the Bermuda Turtle Project has pioneered the conservation of sea turtles in the Atlantic region. Bermuda is one of the few countries on the planet where scientists have been working to try to answer some of the puzzling questions about juvenile sea turtles.
Through a long-term tagging study, local researchers are expanding our knowledge of how young sea turtles spend the first couple of decades of their life living in the developmental habitat Bermuda provides. They also take genetic samples of Bermuda’s resident turtles to figure out which countries they came from, which then helps figure out which countries they will ultimately return to. This information is helping to solve some of the mysteries surrounding young sea turtles, which may spend 20-plus years in developmental habitats before leaving Bermuda’s territorial waters forever to breed.
In past years, satellite transmitters have been fixed onto the shells of turtles that are nearing the time when they will depart from Bermuda to make the oceanic crossing to the Caribbean. This year, however, the Bermuda Turtle Project is particularly interested in tracking young turtles that they know will stay in Bermuda so they can better understand how sea turtles are using their local environment. The Project hopes to learn where they sleep at night, how long they spend foraging on chosen seagrass meadows, and where they spend the cooler winter months, for example.
Sea turtles have a long, complex lifecycle that includes different environments spanning a variety of geographic regions. The Bermuda Turtle Project is helping to close the information gap and pass on valuable data and conservation methods to areas of the Atlantic basin that may not have as strict environmental protection laws as Bermuda does.