Green turtles are listed globally as Endangered by the IUCN and are one of Taronga’s Legacy species. To date, research on marine turtles has focused on natal breeding sites in Queensland, neglecting important resting and foraging grounds in NSW. Taronga is involved in a research project aiming to determine the threats to marine turtles in southeastern Australia to improve their management. Research activities include satellite tracking wild green turtles to understand their movements and habitat use, and to identify foraging hotspots along the NSW coast. Our scientists are also sampling wild turtles to perform genetic and stable isotope analyses and identify potential differences in wild turtle breeding origins and diets.  

Receiving an average of 40 marine turtles annually, the Taronga Wildlife Hospital - Sydney (TWH) has successfully released rehabilitated green turtles with satellite trackers to discover where they go and assess their survivability upon release. In addition, TWH and the Australian Registry of Wildlife Health have collected over 200 green turtle samples from health investigations over the last decade. Using these samples and the satellite tracking data, this project is employing the latest scientific techniques to identify important foraging and resting sites along the NSW coast and examine connectivity between natal breeding sites and foraging sites. This knowledge is crucial to understand turtle ecology and to assess the impact of threatening processes (e.g. plastic ingestion, entanglements, disease, boat strikes) on green turtle breeding stocks. This will in turn assist in the development of more effective management strategies for the conservation of this migratory species. 

Taronga’s scientists have partnered with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Sydney Institute of Marine Sciences to assess the movement and habitat use of free-ranging marine turtles in New South Wales. Through satellite tracking and diet analysis, this project will help identify biologically important areas for marine turtles in NSW and inform regional conservation priorities for these threatened species. In June 2024, the team successfully attached satellite trackers to two Loggerhead Turtles that had been caught on scuba in Forster and one Green Turtle caught in the shallow waters of Coffs Harbour Marina. To date, all three turtles have remained in the local area where they were caught, providing much needed scientific data to support the notion that New South Wales is an important foraging ground for marine turtles. Additional fieldtrips to satellite track green, hawksbill and loggerhead turtles will be conducted over the next three years, with the aims to compare movement, diet and natal origins with our pre-existing data from stranded marine animals.