A gathering of more than 5000 green turtles has been recorded by drone from the air.
While green turtles nest on beaches and therefore can be seen in large numbers around this area, to see them in these numbers at sea is unusual. It seems to be particularly exciting that these sort of sightings are still occurring, particularly given what is going on in the rest of the world.
In the past counting could be done from boats putting a small dab of white paint on each turtles so it doesn’t get counted twice. It seems to be however given this most recent research, that this was substantially underestimating the number of turtles. the new research suggests that this account was under estimating the number of turtles by a factor of 1.73 or 57%.
Of course one of the problem here is that if the initial estimate is under by 57% we have no way to tell what is happening with the population in the wild. scientific studies to make these population estimates more accurate are therefore essential to make sure what we are not missing die offs without realising the population exists
