Indeterminate growth, i.e. growth that persists throughout life, is common in long-lived reptiles. Because fecundity and body size tend to be correlated in such species, individuals face a life-history trade-off at sexual maturity. Saturation tagging and intensive monitoring at nesting grounds can potentially provide opportunities to accumulate data on individual measurements and reproductive output.

To understand the sea turtle and seabird bycatch of Taiwanese tuna longline fleets for conservation purposes, this research analyzed the data collected by onboard observers between 2008 and 2013. In total, data from 149 trips and 24.3 million hooks were analyzed, including 50 albacore large-scale tuna longline vessel (LTLVs) trips, 72 bigeye LTLVs trips, and 27 small-scale tuna longline vessel (STLVs) trips. Seabird bycatch was mostly from the albacore LTLVs.

This is the first identification of marine macrophytes consumed by green turtles in Hong Kong, South China Sea: 6 red algae species (Pterocladiella tenuis, Gelidium pusillum, Chondrus ocellatus, Gracilaria chorda, Grateloupia filicina, and Amansia glomerata), 1 brown alga species (Lobophora variegata), and 1 sea grass (Halophila ovalis) were identified. Plastics and other foreign materials were also found in the stomach contents of 2 of the 8 individuals sampled.

We analyzed 88 control region sequences of green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) from around Hainan Island in the South China Sea. These sequences had a length of 489 bp and revealed 8 mtDNA haplotypes of which four haplotypes (CMC1, CMC4, CMC7, and CMC8) had not been discovered before. Haplotype diversity (h) and nucleotide diversity (π) were 0.45 ± 0.054 and 0.0035 ± 0.0014, respectively. Neighbor-Joining tree based on control region sequences revealed that genetic relationship between green sea turtles from the South China Sea and from Japan Sea were very close.

The most recent climate change projections show a global increase in temperatures along with precipitation changes throughout the 21st century. However, regional projections do not always match global projections and species with global distributions may exhibit varying regional susceptibility to climate change. Here we show the effect of local climatic conditions on the hatchling output of leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) at four nesting sites encompassing the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. We found a heterogeneous effect of climate.

Nascent fungal infections are currently considered as one of the main threats for biodiversity and ecosystem health, and have driven several animal species into critical risk of extinction. Sea turtles are one of the most endangered groups of animals and only seven species have survived to date. Here, we described two pathogenic species, i.e., Fusarium falciforme and Fusarium keratoplasticum, that are globally distributed in major turtle nesting areas for six sea turtle species and that are implicated in low hatch success.