Lepidochelys kempii, Garman, 1880

Meylan, Peter A., Meylan, Anne B. & Gray, Jennifer A., 2011, The Ecology And Migrations Of Sea Turtles 8. Tests Of The Developmental Habitat Hypothesis, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (357), pp. 1-70 : 44

Lepidochelys kempii

THE LITERATURE: The fieldwork reported here has not resulted in any data on Lepidochelys kempii . However, evidence that this species also occupies benthic developmental habitat is abundant in the literature. There are at least 14 studies that provide evidence of an immature-dominated benthic developmental stage in this species (table 13, fig. 27). Eight of these are within the Gulf of Mexico and six are on the Atlantic coast of the United States (see also Schmid and Barichivich, 2006). In three of these studies, small numbers of mature individuals were identified. In two studies, maturity status was evaluated on the basis of size alone ( Henwood and Ogren, 1987; Schmid, 1995); in the third ( Landry et al., 2005) 20 % of the sample was laparoscoped, but it is unclear whether the reported adults were included within that sample. In all 14 studies, L. kempii first appeared at benthic developmental foraging areas at about 20 cm SCL and departed by about 66 cm SCL. Minimum size at sexual maturity has been estimated to be 58–60 cm SCL (Schmid and Barichivich, 2006), but few studies report mature individuals.

Evidence of residency, in the form of recaptures, was seen in most of these studies on L. kempii (table 13). However, several recent papers emphasized the itinerant nature of immature L. kempii , citing movements in and out of benthic foraging grounds, notably along the east coast of the United States (Morreale and Standora, 2005) and the northern Gulf of Mexico (Schmid and Barichivich, 2006). At Cedar Key, Florida, Schmid et al. (2003) showed strong evidence of residency for periods of 2–3 months using sonic tags, but they thought that longer-term tracking would be needed to document seasonal movements.

The behavior of Lepidochelys kempii stands in marked contrast to that of L. olivacea , which most authors now consider to remain pelagic throughout its life (Musick and Limpus, 1996; Bolten, 2003). Kopitsky et al. (1999) identified a number of immatures in a sample of 145 L. olivacea observed at sea during a survey of Stenella in the eastern tropical Pacific. Both Zug et al. (2006) and Polovina et al. (2004) obtained mixed samples of immatures and matures from the same general areas for studies of growth and migration, respectively. The few immature L. olivacea encountered during the West Atlantic surveys ( Carr et al., 1982; Meylan and Meylan, unpubl. data) had been taken at sea by fishermen seeking deepwater fishes, mostly in the major channels between the islands of the Lesser Antilles. Limpus (1975) reported two subadult L. olivacea from Cairn’s Inlet, Queensland, from shallow coastal waters with a mud bottom bordered by mangroves. However, coastal records for subadults of this species remain rare and we assume that most immature L. olivacea remain pelagic, as do the adults.

TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL PATTERNS OF HABITAT USE