preparing her model for publication as well. I know she has 

 presented it at the 50th anniversary meeting of the Association 

 of Southeastern Biologists and has sought constructive criticism 

 and input from colleagues. We must look in the future to 

 investigators like these to achieve any real progress in the 

 assessment of management options for sea turtle conservation. 



In closing, let me "get out on a limb" and say that I 

 believe that we know enough about sea turtle biology in general 

 to make certain recommendations concerning management options for 

 their exploitation. For example, we know that all sea turtle 

 species are relatively long-lived, late-maturing animals with 

 high fecundity, high juvenile (and egg) mortality and low 

 (natural) adult mortality. We also know that each of the species 

 is iteroparous both within and between years. (For those of you 

 who don't speak biological Greek, that means they reproduce more 

 than once.) The different sea turtle species may vary somewhat, 

 but all of them exhibit these traits in their basic life 

 histories. For some species, such as loggerheads, we have pretty 

 good data concerning numerical values for each of these aspects 

 of their biology. 



I'd like to share with you the results of a population model 

 based on data gathered over the last 25 years on loggerheads off 

 the Atlantic coast of the United States. 



In Figure 1, I have attempted to incorporate all we know 

 about loggerhead population biology. I want to stress one thing 

 here and I'm sure that this statement will be controversial and 

 that some (or perhaps all!) of the panel members may disagree. 

 Nevertheless, all I intend to say about Figure 1 and about 

 loggerheads pertains to other sea turtle species as well, because 

 even though their population ecology differs in minor ways, they 

 all have basically the same life history strategy, and this 

 enables us to make certain generalizations about them. 



First, I'd like to tell you what this figure says to me 

 about management options, and then I'd like to throw it open to a 

 discussion of management options by the panel. 



The figure illustrates a concept called "Reproductive 

 Value," which is a measure of the value to the population of an 

 individual female turtle of a particular age. Reproductive value 

 represents the present value of any future offspring that she is 

 likely to have, given her chances of surviving, and the number of 

 offspring she is likely to have if she does survive. 



Simply stated, the V(x) or vertical axis from to 500 

 represents an index of how valuable an individual is based on her 

 future reproductive contribution to the population. The upper 

 and lower curves represent two different models. The lower curve 

 is for a population that is stationary (that is, neither growing 



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