seems reasonable to regard the entire group of loggerheads 

 represented by the adult females nesting throughout the 

 southeastern U.S. as a single unit for the purposes of 

 establishing management policy. My reasons for such a conclusion 

 are not very sophisticated, even prosaic. They have to do with 

 the vagility of nesting females. Although most females exhibit 

 considerable site fidelity there are now plenty of records to 

 show that quite a few move long distances up and down the coast 

 between nestings within seasons and between seasons. In 38 

 records of within-season renesting Bjorndal et al. (1983) 

 observed distance intervals of 26 to 182 km. One loggerhead 

 nested at Cape Island in North Carolina on 9 July, 1979, and then 

 again on 28 July at Cape Canaveral, Florida, a minimum distance 

 of 725 km (Stoneburner and Ehrhart 1981) . LeBuff (1974) observed 

 that a loggerhead tagged while nesting on the west coast of 

 Florida in 1968 nested four years later on the Atlantic coast 

 near the center of the peninsula. In light of the vagility 

 demonstrated for loggerheads by records such as these and others 

 too numerous to list, it seems advisable to view the southeastern 

 U.S. loggerhead aggregation as a single functional unit. 



The matter of the size of the U.S. population has been under 

 consideration for at least 20 years (Table 2) . Earlier studies 

 focused primarily on the state of Florida, where about 90% of all 

 U.S. loggerhead nesting occurs. Nevertheless, important nesting 

 activity occurs in Georgia and the Carol inas and the more recent 

 estimates (the last four on Table 2) take that into account. We 

 have very useful new information, developed since the first 

 Western Atlantic Turtle Symposium, that contributes to our 

 understanding of the size of the U.S. population. As noted 

 above, Murphy and Hopkins (1984) have perfected the methodology 

 of aerial survey that was begun by Carr and Carr (1977) and Shoop 

 et al. (1985). Their careful collection and competent analysis 

 of nesting data gathered during surveillance flights in the 

 summer of 1983 (and their stochastic determination of 4.1 nests 

 per female) have produced an estimate of 14,150 adult females 

 nesting in 1983. As one who has spent each summer since 1976 on 

 the nesting beaches of east Florida, I can attest to the fact 

 that 1983 was an average, or "normal," year. This view is 

 corroborated by data in Conley and Hoffman (1987), as well. As 

 noted, the methodology and analysis that produced the 14,150 

 estimate was well-conceived and executed, and it conforms well 

 with nesting data available elsewhere (Harris et al. 1984; 

 Hopkins and Richardson 1984; Conley and Hoffman 1987). It is by 

 far the best estimate available, and I would like to go on record 

 as endorsing it, as Mager (1985) did in his loggerhead review. If 

 the 14,150 estimate is approximately correct, it agrees with 

 Ross's (1982) contention that this is the second largest 

 aggregation of loggerheads on earth. His best estimate of the 

 size of the group that nests at Masirah and the nearby Kuria 

 Muria Islands, in Oman, was 30,000 adult females. 



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