BULLETIN OF THE FLORIDA STATE MUSEUM BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES Volume 4 Number 10 THE ATLANTIC LOGGERHEAD SEA TURTLE, CARETTA CARETTA CARETTA (L.), IN AMERICA I. NESTING AND MIGRATION OF THE ATLANTIC LOGGERHEAD TURTLE David K. Caldwell, Archie Carr, and Larry H. Ogren II. MULTIPLE AND GROUP NESTING BY THE ATLANTIC LOGGERHEAD TURTLE David K. Caldwell, Frederick H. Berry, Archie Carr, and Robert A. Ragotzkie III. THE LOGGERHEAD TURTLES OF CAPE ROMAIN, SOUTH CAROLINA Abridged and annotafed by David K. Caldwell \.~8~YJ .imer-/ UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA Gainesville 1959 The numbers of THE BULLETIN OF THE FLORIDA STATE MUSEUM, BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, will be published at irregular intervals. Volumes will contain about 800 pages and will not necessarily be completed in any one calendar year. OLIVER L. AUSTIN, JR., Editor The publication of this number of THE BUD LETIN has been made possible by a grant from the Graduate School, University of Florida. All communications concerning purchase or exchange of the publication should be addressed to the Curator of Biological Sciences, Florida State Museum, Seagle Building, Gainesville, Florida. Manuscripts should be sent to the Editor of the BULLETIN, Flint Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. Published 8 June 1959 Price for this issue $.70 THE ATLANTIC LOGGERHEAD SEA TURTLE, CARETTA CARETTA CARETTA (L.), IN AMERICA DAVID K. CALDWELL, ARCHIE CARR, and others COORDINATORS' PREFACE When the series of studies now being carried on under National Science Foundation sponsorship (NSF project G-1684 and G-5479, principal investigator Archie Carr) was planned it w.as proposed that the Atlantic green turtle, Chelonia mydas mydas (Linnaeus), be made the central subject of the research., The herbivorousness of green turtles was visualized as imposing 6n them a distinctive way of life, involving long periodic journeys between feeding and breeding grounds. This, in turn, was seen as a unique attribute, setting Chelonia off from other sea turtles-making it easy to study because it gathers to breed in rookeries, and especially interesting because the journeys to and from the rookeries posed special problems 'of orienta- tion and suggested that Chelonia.must have an extraordinary capacity to navigate. While all this still seems true, it is now clear that dif- ferences among sea turtles with respect to reproductive travel are less than was supposed. Data from a tagging program at Tortuguero, Costa Rica, have been strengthening the credibility of fishermen's tales of navigatory feats bygreen turtles. These stories constituted the original assump- tion to be tested by the Tortuguero studies, and while final proof of their authenticity will be difficult to get, there remains no real doubt of their essential truth. While the case for the navigatory prowess of Chelonia has been growing, information from various other sources has suggested that all sea turtles migrate. The following suite of papers supports our belief that the life cycle of the carnivorous Atlantic loggerhead, Caretta caretta caretta (Linnaeus), may in most ways be much more similar to that of the green turtle than we imagined. Like the green turtle, the loggerhead travels far, it travels in groups, it emerges more than once. to complete a season's laying, it tends to return to the same place for successive layings and is able to locate these sites with some precision, and its breeding range includes places where aggregated nesting occu_rs as well as sites of separate emergence by lone individuals. Details of nesting and development of the, young and their early behavior also are surprisingly similar for all the sea turtles. 294 BULLETIN FLORIDA STATE MUSEUM Vol. 4 To most people, including most zoologists, the loggerhead is an animal to be seen on the sea beach as a nesting female or an emerging hatchling, or at shipside or dockside as a big head stuck up out of the water to breathe. We really know almost nothing about what gees on between these few points of our Contact with the animal. Though the information that can be added is fragmentary, it fits in with the ' fishermen's stories and our growing belief, in the essential consonance of the life cycles of all the sea turtles. The three papers on loggerheads included in this series were pre- pared independently. They are closely related, even overlapping in some aspects, and it Was felt that workers in herpetology and marine ecology would find it convenient to have them available under one cover. We, and the various other authors, are indebted to our re- spective organizations for pefmitting, and to the editorial staff of the Bulletin for countenancing this unorthodox style of presentation. David K. Caldwell, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and Archie Carr, University of Florida, Coordinators. March, 1959