Nesting Biogeography of Sea Turtles in the Wider Caribbean by Oceanic Society

The map of nesting biogeography is based almost exclusively on nesting data that were provided by members of the
WIDECAST network to create the Atlas of Sea Turtle Nesting Habitat for the Wider Caribbean Region (Eckert and
Eckert 2019). That exhaustive digital inventory documented more than 1,341 nesting beaches representing 2,667 species-specific nesting sites among the 45 nations and territories that comprise the WIDECAST network.
For the purposes of the map, we chose to display data on all six species that nest within the Caribbean region on a single map. Additional data were incorporated from the SWOT
database for large nesting sites (those with >10,000 crawls per year) to further distinguish between nesting sites with 10,001–100,000 crawls per year and those with greater than 100,000 crawls per year (from all species combined). Complete data citations for all source data can be found in SWOT Report, vol. 15 at https://www.seaturtlestatus.org/swot-report-vol-15.
Nesting sites are represented by dots that are colored according to the species present. The proportion of nesting by each species is indicated by the colors shown within the dot. The dots are scaled according to the total nesting abundance for all species at that site. For a more comprehensive presentation of sea turtle nesting data in the Wider Caribbean Region, including species-specific maps, trend data, and detailed supplementary information, see the WIDECAST Atlas at https://widecast.org/widecast-publications.