Laura Jim and Marc Rice and an HPA team of 2 MS and 8 US students traveled to the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel/ Keasanui to capture and tag honu (green turtles). The Mauna Lani Bay Hotel is closing for renovations for one and one-half years so we wanted to get a baseline of what turtles are there now and what their health status is. This way, we will have something to compare the results from future capture trips at this site. We want to see if there is any change in population size/condition resulting from the reduction in tourists in the area.
We were able to capture 10 honu during the day long activity. They ranged in size from 13 pounds to 55 lbs... all juvenile turtles. There were 3 turtles that we had tagged previously and 7 newly captured turtles. All turtles appear to be in good health but their growth rate remains quite low.
Below are some pictures from the day's activities. All students participated actively and positively in the capture and workup of the turtles as well as interacting with the many tourists that came by.
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