Limpus et al., 1992:

"Feedling-ground captures of green (Chelonia mydas) and loggerhead (Caretta caretta) turtles tagged while nesting at eastern Australian rookeries over a 21-year period are summarised. 

These turtles which nest in the Great Barrier Reef region range widely throughout the Arafura and Coral seas.  The tag recoveries include many from turtles that live in neighbouring countries and migrate to breed in Australia.  The breeding female shows a high fidelity to her home feeding ground as well as to her nesting beach.  Most recaptures of the green turtles occurred during hunting for food by indigenous people while most recaptures of loggerhead turtles were incidental captures in commercial fishing activities.

Of the 118 C. caretta recaptured, 81 dispersed from mainland rookeries and 37 from coral cays of the southern GBR.  These recaptures demonstrate a wide-ranging geographical distribution of postnesting migration by C. caretta from the eastern Australian rookeries. Recapture sites ranged from Montague Is. (35°15'S.) in southern New South Wales to as far north as the Solomon Is (5°20'S.), and from New Caledonia (22°20'S., 166°30'E.) in the east to the Arnhem Land coast (13°36'S., 136°25'E.) in the western Gulf of Carpentaria.  International tag recoveries were reported from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Is and New Caledonia.

Of the 273 female C. mydas recaptured, 89 dispersed from coral cays of the southern GBR (88 from the Capricorn-Bunker Groups, 1 from the Swain Reefs cays), 165 dispersed from the northern GBR cays (163 from Raine Is. and Moulter Cay, 2 from No. 7 and No. 8 Sandbanks), and 19 from Bramble Cay and adjacent islands of north-eastern Torres Strait.  The tag recovery sites for  C. mydas from the Southern GBR rookeries include localities ranging from Moreton Bay (27°21'S.) in south Queensland to the Warrier Reefs (9°22'S., 143°13'E.) in northern Torres Strait, and from the Isle of Pines (22°40'S., 167°25'E.) in New Caledonia to Goulburn Is. (11°36'S., 133°29'E.) in the Northern Territory.  International tag recoveries were reported from Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia.  The tag recovery sites for C. mydas from the northern GBR rookeries include localities ranging from off Innisfail (17°23'S.) in North Queensland to near Lae (7°12'S., 147°07'E.) in Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea, and from New Caledonia (16°32'S., 167° 49'E.) in the east to Melville I. (11°15'S., 130°22'E.) in western Northern Territory.  International tag recoveries have been reported from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Caledonia.

The furthest afield that a female C. caretta was recorded from her eastern Australian nesting beach was 2620km: turtle T416 was trawled near Groote Eylandt 586 days after nesting at Mon Repos.  

This study has demonstrated that Chelonia mydas and Caretta caretta that nest at eastern Australian rookeries are capable of large-scale postnesting migration to feeding areas over 2600 km distant from their home rookeries.  These migrations are comparable to the large-scale postnesting migrations recorded for C. mydas and C. caretta in other countries (Hughes 1974; Pritchard 1976; Mortimer and Carr 1987).  

This study re-emphasises one of the central problems facing marine turtle conservation worldwide:  no one country controls the fate of a given turtle population.  Even the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, the largest marine conservation area in the world, is not large enough to contain an entire population of either C. caretta or C. mydas.  Marine turtles are an internationally shared resource and, in particular, the countries bordering the Arafura Sea and Coral Sea region (Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Australia) share the turtle populations that breed within eastern Australia."  

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Citation and/or URL

Limpus, C.J., Miller, J.D., Parmenter, C.J., Reimer, D., McLachlan, N., and Webb, R. 1992, Migration of Green (Chelonia mydas) and Loggerhead (Caretta caretta) Turtles to and from Eastern Australian Rookeries. Wildlife Research, 19; 347-358. © CSIRO 1992. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Australia.  http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/144/paper/WR9920347.htm

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Spatial Coverage

Eastern Australia

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Temporal Coverage

23 years of data up to 1990.

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Update Frequency

Not applicable 

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Other Information

None