Schmid. Marine turtle populations of the east-central coast of Florida 



147 



MEXICO 



Figure 6 



Long-distance recaptures and recoveries of tagged Kemp's ridley turtles Note: Arrows 

 are not intended to indicate routes traveled by tagged turtles; they are a visual aid to 

 differentiate tagging and recapture sites. 0=tagging location; X=recapture location. 



curred because amount of effort and location of trawl- 

 ing were a function of shrimp abundance. These fac- 

 tors certainly contributed to the annual, and possi- 

 bly seasonal, variation in turtle captures observed 

 in this study. Restrictions imposed on the shrimping 

 industry during the course of the study also affected 

 data collection. There was a marked reduction in the 

 number of loggerhead captures following NMFS regu- 



lations issued in June 1987, requiring the use of 

 TED's in the Cape Canaveral area (Federal Regis- 

 ter, 1987). Despite the bias and inconsistencies of 

 data collection, the use of trawl gear allowed access 

 to marine turtle developmental stages not encoun- 

 tered in nesting beach surveys and inshore netting 

 studies. Furthermore, the Cape Canaveral area has 

 a history of trawl studies for general comparison. 



