Priorities for Mediterranean marine turtle conservation and management in the face of climate change

As climate-related impacts threaten marine biodiversity globally, it is important to adjust conservation efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. Translating scientific knowledge into practical management, however, is often complicated due to resource, economic and policy constraints, generating a knowledge-action gap. To develop potential solutions for marine turtle conservation, we explored the perceptions of key actors across 18 countries in the Mediterranean. These actors evaluated their perceived relative importance of 19 adaptation and mitigation measures that could safeguard marine turtles from climate change. Of importance, despite differences in expertise, experience and focal country, the perceptions of researchers and management practitioners largely converged with respect to prioritizing adaptation and mitigation measures. Climate change was considered to have the greatest impacts on offspring sex ratios and suitable nesting sites. The most viable adaptation/mitigation measures were considered to be reducing other pressures that act in parallel to climate change. Ecological effectiveness represented a key determinant for implementing proposed measures, followed by practical applicability, financial cost, and societal cost. This convergence in opinions across actors likely reflects long-standing initiatives in the Mediterranean region towards supporting knowledge exchange in marine turtle conservation. Our results provide important guidance on how to prioritize measures that incorporate climate change in decision-making processes related to the current and future management and protection of marine turtles at the ocean-basin scale, and could be used to guide decisions in other regions globally. Importantly, this study demonstrates a successful example of how interactive processes can be used to fill the knowledge-action gap between research and management.This work was conducted under FutureMares EU project that received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 869300. The Mediterranean Marine Turtle Working Group was established in 2017 and is continuously supported by MedPAN and the National Marine Park of Zakynthos. The work of AC was supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the “First Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Faculty members and Researchers and the procurement of high-cost research equipment grant” (Project Number: 2340).Peer reviewe

Advancing Sea Turtle Monitoring at Nesting and Near Shore Habitats with UAVs, Data Loggers, and State of the Art Technologies

In the face of environmental change, high-quality and fine-scale information is essential in order to monitor the highly dynamic environments on land and sea. While traditional approaches to data collection face a number of practical limitations, advanced technologies could supplement and further improve our efforts. Taking sea turtles as a modeling organism, we present a novel methodological framework for monitoring species by means of advanced technologies, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles coupled with image and temperature sensors. Diverse monitoring protocols were refined through pilot studies conducted in both terrestrial and nearshore sea turtle habitats. Our approach focuses on the collection of information for critical biological parameters concerning species reproduction and habitat use, following the complex life cycle of the species. Apart from biological information, our framework encompasses also the collection of information on crucial environmental factors that might be changing due to current and future human-derived pressures, such as beach erosion and temperature profile, as well as highly important human activities such as recreational use within nesting beaches that could undermine habitat quality for the species. This holistic and standardized approach to monitoring using advanced technologies could foster our capacity for conservation, resolving difficulties previously addressed and improving the collection of biological and environmental data in the frame of an adaptive management scheme