Occurrences of Sea turtles in Azores Archipelago

Sea turtles are the best-known and more widespread marine reptiles. However, information on their distribution and the occurrence of most species, except for nesting beaches, remains scarce and sporadic, depending on sightings from fishing vessels, tourist activities and occurrences in coastal areas as well as fishing bycatch. Since the last updated species’ list for the Azores (Santos et al, 2010), no new species’ record was known for Azorean waters, until October 2020, with the confirmed sighting of an Olive Ridley, Lepidochelys olivacea (Eschscholtz, 1829) (Barcelos et al. 2021). After that, in February 2021, a second individual was found stranded on Pico Island, already in an advanced state of decomposition. This increased the number of species present in Azores EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) to six out of the seven extant worldwide. The remaining one, Natator depressus (Garman, 1880), is native to the Indo-pacific (see Red List Standards & Petitions Subcommittee, 1996).

FUNDING: AZORESBIOPORTAL – PORBIOTA (Azores PO 2020 - ACORES-01-0145-FEDER-000072) TOTAL BUDGET: 299. 901,83€ EU Support: 254. 916, 56€ This project was financed by FEDER in 85% and by Azorean Public funds by 15% through Operational Program Azores 2020. This work is also funded by FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020 Programme and National Funds through FCT - Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under the Research Infrastructure PORBIOTA - Portuguese E-Infrastructure for Information and Research on Biodiversity, project number POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022127. For the period 2022-2023- Portal da Biodiversidade dos Açores (2022-2023) - PO Azores Project - M1.1.A/INFRAEST CIENT/001/2022.

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