Sea Turtles and the Problem of Hybridization

Carr, Archie; Dodd, C

There are seven, perhaps eight, species (and five genera) of sea turtles in the oceans of the world representing a lineage that goes back to the late Jurassic, 140 million years ago. With the exception of the Australian flatback, Chelonia depressa, which occurs only in northern Australia, all are faced with a variety of serious threats to their continued existence. The other species are generally circumglobal in distribution; they include the green turtle, Chelonia mydas, which occurs primarily in tropical waters although individuals may occur in temperate waters; the loggerhead, Caretta caretta, which regularly occurs in subtropical and temperate waters and occasionally in the tropics; Kemp's ridley, Lepidochelys kempii, the most endangered of all sea turtles, occurring only in the Gulf of Mexico and along the east coast of North America; the olive ridley, Lepidochelys olivacea, which occurs in tropical waters except in the northern Caribbean; hawks bill, Eretmochelys imbricata, a tropical species; and the leatherback, Dermochelys coriacea, the largest sea turtle, which nests in the tropics but regularly migrates to far northern and southern latitudes to feed. Some sea turtle biologists recognize an eighth species, the black turtle, Chelonia agassizii, which occurs off the west coast of North/Central, and South America, as distinct from C. mydas (A. Carr, Jr., P.C.H. Pritchard, personal communications). Reviews of the biology, distribution, and threats to these species have been summarized in the many papers in Bjorndal (1982) and by Frazier (1980).

Sea Turtles and the Problem of Hybridization

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