case of the turtles that migrate from the coast of Brazil to 

 Ascension Island, or from French Polynesia to Vanuatu and New 

 Caledonia. 



(2) Nesting areas. The green turtle is strongly colonial 

 in its nesting habits, although it does not form synchronized 

 "arribadas" as do members of the genus Lepidochelvs . In the west 

 Atlantic and the Caribbean, the major nesting grounds are at 

 Tortuguero, Costa Rica; eastern Surinam; and Ascension Island, 

 with smaller but important colonies in Quintana Roo (Mexico) , 

 Cuba, northwestern Guyana, Isla Aves (Venezuela) , Trinidad and 

 other islands off the coast of Brazil. Small numbers nest in 

 many other places, and the numbers of nesting green turtles in 

 Florida (Atlantic coast) appear to be increasing progressively. 



Major nesting grounds are found in the Indian and Pacific 

 oceans also. In the Indian Ocean the most important sites are 

 Europa Island (Mozambique Channel) and other small islands in the 

 Mascarenes, including St. Brandon's; and in western Australia. 

 In the Pacific Ocean, green turtles nest in Hawaii (French 

 Frigate Shoal) in moderate numbers, and in New Caledonia and in 

 Queensland, Australia, in very large numbers. Many other nesting 

 colonies, some of them important but the majority rather small, 

 exist elsewhere. 



Food habits ; The green turtle is almost entirely vegetarian 

 once it is past the immediate post-hatchling phase, and in the 

 western Caribbean seagrasses of many genera constitute the 

 preferred diet. Small quantities of invertebrates may also be 

 eaten, but in many cases such ingestion may be accidental. 



Green turtles from several nesting colonies utilize the same 

 feeding grounds along the coast of Brazil, but there they feed 

 predominantly upon marine algae of the families Rhodophyceae , 

 Chlorophyceae, and Phaeophyceae, rather than upon marine grasses. 

 These turtles have substantially different intestinal floral 

 communities from those typical of the grass-feeding green turtles 

 of the Caribbean, and possibly some of the phenotypic differences 

 between the adult turtles in these different populations may 

 relate to the different diets. The turtles of Isla Aves, the 

 Guianas, and Ascension Island, although presumably reproductively 

 isolated (since copulation occurs in the nesting areas) , feed 

 upon similar organisms in the shallow waters off Brazil, and they 

 are similar in adult size and, at least superficially, in form. 



Reproductive ecology ; As mentioned above, the green turtle 

 has colonial nesting habits, and animals that have dispersed 

 through the waters of several nations may converge back to a 

 small nesting beach every second or third (or fourth) year, when 

 they reach reproductive condition. Thus, nearly all of the green 

 turtles in the western Caribbean converge upon less than 40 km of 

 mainland beach in Caribbean Costa Rica to nest. After depositing 



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