most of this review on nesting beach survey data. That is not to 

 say, however, that conservation practice should focus on nesting 

 females to the virtual exclusion of turtles in developmental and 

 other habitats. Nesting beach censuses are like a window through 

 which one can view patterns and trends in population size, but 

 the key to recovery and population stability undoubtedly lies 

 with the wise management of immature turtles, as well. This 

 common-sense conclusion is only recently corroborated 

 theoretically by the important new work of Richardson and 

 Richardson (1982), Frazer (1983, 1984, 1986, 1987b) and Grouse et 

 al. (1987), about which more will be said below. 



Censusing nesting females directly on beaches where nesting 

 density is relatively high (i.e., greater than ca. 100/km/yr) is 

 generally not feasible . The disturbance to the nesting beach 

 that would result from any census operation large enough in scale 

 to observe and/or tag every emerging female would be self- 

 defeating and prohibitively expensive. It is possible, however, 

 to enumerate fresh nests daily, throughout the season 

 ( Wither ington 1986) , or to derive valid estimates of total 

 nesting from sample censuses carried out on approximately 40% or 

 more of the days in a nesting season (Ehrhart and Raymond 1987) . 

 Indeed, most of the available data are in the form of nesting 

 totals, not in the actual number of female turtles comprising any 

 given population or aggregation. Derivation of that number 

 (total individual females) from nesting totals has been a 

 vigorously debated issue and I enter that debate with 

 trepidation, fully aware that I am inviting the criticism of 

 oversimplification. So be it. A number of the conclusions that 

 I come to here will be controversial and I welcome the discussion 

 and constructive criticism that will surely characterize the 

 panel discussion that follows. 



At issue here are two fundamental aspects of loggerhead 

 reproduction: 1) the mean number of nests deposited per female 

 per season, and 2) the average multi-annual remigration period 

 length for females of a given population. Loggerheads often lay 

 as many as six clutches per year (Lund 1986; Talbert et al. 1980) 

 and totals of seven (Lenarz et al. 1981) or eight (C. LeBuff, 

 pers. comm.) have been observed. Mean clutch production is 

 apparently much smaller than that, however, throughout the 

 western Atlantic. Talbert et al. (1980) reported that 

 loggerheads usually nest two or three times in South Carolina and 

 Richardson and Richardson (1982) estimated 2.5 nests per female 

 at Little Cumberland Island, Georgia. Other estimates for that 

 same area exhibit considerable annual variation, with Frazer and 

 Richardson (1985) reporting a range of 2.81 to 4.18 over a 10 

 year period and Stoneburner (1981) estimating only 1.84 to 1.97 

 nests per female per season. Murphy and Hopkins (1984) also used 

 data from Little Cumberland Island and obtained an estimate of 

 4.1 nests per female by stochastically manipulating the seasonal 

 distribution of nesting dates. Few estimates exist from 



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