Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas)

Mohamed bin Zayed Species project number 10251545

STCP-SL is working with coastal communities to save sea turtles in Sierra Leone. This goal is achived through collaboration and addressing key community needs through community development programmes. Since the inception of STCP-SL, local communities have benefited in diverse ways including hiring of community youths for beach and bycatch monitoring, construction of a three classroom school on one of the 7 islands in the Turtle Islands - Sierra Leone, providing improved water wells for all the seven isalnds in order to prevent the outbreak of diarrhoea, dysentry and other water borne diseases, helping two indigenes of Turtle islands to meet their institutional charges and transportation costs, constructing latrines for two coastal communities, providing huts and offices at three key landing sites in the Western area of Sierra Leone and addressing to key emmergencies on the Turtle Islands through the provision of transportaion and tarpaulin for fire disaster victims at one of the Turtle Islands. With these, we have been able to record that all the five turtle species (Green, Olive, Loggerhead, Hawksbill and Leahterback) nest on beaches in Sierra Leone and have released more than 7000 hatchlings.  More than 400 turtles caught in the artisanal fisheries have been released by monitors in the coastal communities STCP is operating.

Our bycatch record shows that there are more green turtles caught in the artisanal fisheries than the other species while the nesting effort shows that more olive ridleys nest on beaches in Sierra Leone than the others.