The overall goal of this project is to strengthen the MTTC?s existing capacity to offer sea turtle tagging and population monitoring training to countries in the Wider Caribbean, to meet tagging equipment needs of individual sea turtle monitoring projects in the region, and to ensure that the national and regional databases continue to be maintained at international record-keeping standards.

Train 6 individuals from regional sea turtle groups and 10-15 individuals from the general public and UWI student body in the 2020 nesting season in population monitoring, tagging, data collection, mitigation of impacts of coastal activities on sea turtles, including ecotourism, and other conservation actions.

2. Increase the availability and use of tags by trained projects in the region. The objective is to strengthen the sustainability of participating projects, and contribute to the conservation of shared populations of sea turtles in the region by allowing the documentation of their movements. Making the data available to Caribbean scientists and policy makers, as well as NGOs, community groups and the media will improve conservation and management efforts. It will further strengthen the efforts of previously isolated sea turtle tagging projects throughout the region.

3. Complete national tag data entry and ensure that the regional databases are maintained to international record-keeping standards. Barbados has the largest nesting population of hawksbills in the Caribbean and a six month hawksbill nesting season. Monitoring of nesting activity on the index beach and other high density nesting beaches requires occurs through completion of paper datasheets which must subsequently be entered into the national database. We have looked at electronic data entry but the nature of working in sandy, wet environments means that paper is still more reliable. At the end of the season, we have thousands of datasheets to enter and we do not have sufficient assistance to enter the data. The objective of requesting funds for part time assistance for 4 months over the duration of the project to enter the 2019-2020 data.

Train 6 individuals from regional sea turtle groups and 10-15 individuals from the general public and UWI student body in the 2020 nesting season in population monitoring, tagging, data collection, mitigation of impacts of coastal activities on sea turtles, including ecotourism, and other conservation actions.

2. Increase the availability and use of tags by trained projects in the region. The objective is to strengthen the sustainability of participating projects, and contribute to the conservation of shared populations of sea turtles in the region by allowing the documentation of their movements. Making the data available to Caribbean scientists and policy makers, as well as NGOs, community groups and the media will improve conservation and management efforts. It will further strengthen the efforts of previously isolated sea turtle tagging projects throughout the region.

3. Complete national tag data entry and ensure that the regional databases are maintained to international record-keeping standards. Barbados has the largest nesting population of hawksbills in the Caribbean and a six month hawksbill nesting season. Monitoring of nesting activity on the index beach and other high density nesting beaches requires occurs through completion of paper datasheets which must subsequently be entered into the national database. We have looked at electronic data entry but the nature of working in sandy, wet environments means that paper is still more reliable. At the end of the season, we have thousands of datasheets to enter and we do not have sufficient assistance to enter the data. The objective of requesting funds for part time assistance for 4 months over the duration of the project to enter the 2019-2020 data.