The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) is calling on peoples from all Pacific Islands to report information from tagged turtles to their National Environment or Fisheries Department.

The appeal is part of an initiative to track the migratory paths of over 15,000 turtles in the Pacific region, SPREP announced in a statement on February 12.

The turtles have clipping tags attached to their flippers. “Each flipper tag has a one-letter prefix and a series of up to five numbers. The tag number contains important information about the turtle such as the date it was tagged, the country it was released from, the organisation or person that tagged it and where it has travelled”

SPREP also cautioned people not to remove the tags from the flippers of the turtles as it would cause pain and stops the sharing of valuable information about the history of the turtle.

The Turtle Database Officer at SPREP, Catherine Siota said “If you come across a tagged sea turtle, please let us know, as this information is valuable and in return we have the Turtle Tagging T-Shirts which we can send you to show that you have supported this important conservation initiative”

“We really need your support for this to be a successful programme. This is a time for all Pacific communities to come together to protect our sea turtles so if you do come across a tagged turtle, please let us know”

According to the SPREP website there are six species of endangered sea turtles in the Pacific, there migrations are constantly followed with satellite-tags.