Micro-habitat description of sea turtle nests on three public nesting beaches in LaFlor (Pacific) southeast Nicaragua, and Pacuare Reserve and Tortuguero (Caribbean) Costa Rica during July 2013

Abstract

Descriptions of the micro habitat of sea turtle nests were recorded on three public beaches: La Flor (latitude 11.14282, longitude 85.79418, Pacific) in southwest Nicaragua, and Pacuar Reserve (latitude10.20123 longitude 83.25925), and Tourtuguero (latitude 10.59583, longitude 83.52520) at the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Species covered are the Olive Ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea, TSN 173840), Leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea TSN 173843), and presumably Hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata TSN 208666) and the Green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas TSN 173833). After a nest was identified during night and the turtle left successfully, next day the following micro-habitat attributes were collected with dates: distance from waterline, distance from treeline, slope of beach, nearest known nest, and tree height. The presence of egg shells, tree canopy cover, vegatation type, occurence of plastic and driftwood were also recorded, as well as a description of the sand. Geo-referencing of nests was done with a GPS using decimal latitude and longitude (geographic datum of WGS84). This dataset consists of an MS Excel sheet and is <1MB in size. Some photos are also provided for visual purposes.