National Report to WATS II for the Dominican Republic

Abstract

The exploitation of sea turtles in the waters around Hispaniola during colonial times has been well documented by early European chroniclers. According to their accounts, marine turtles were an important resource in the development of the island. Then, the fisheries were heavily supported from turtle stocks. Since then, increasing human populations and growing use of turtle products have stimulated a drastic intensification of the exploitation that probably exceeds the maximum sustainable yield of the resource. The data presented here is summarized from the unpublished report "Exploitation, conservation and management of sea turtles in the Dominican Republic" (Ottenwalder, 1987), prepared for the Western Atlantic Turtle Symposium (WATS II) and the National Marine Fisheries Service under contract with the Sea Grant Program and the University of Puerto Rico. We discuss here the results of this survey (ground-truth), as well as previous available data from aerial and ground-truth surveys (Ottenwalder, 1981; Ross and Ottenwalder, 1983) to assess nesting activity, population trends and exploitation levels of sea turtles in the Dominican Republic.