Initial Review of the Sea Turtle Nest Monitoring System
http://www.seaturtle.org/nestdb/Last year was the inaugural year of the Sea Turtle Nest Monitoring System (STNMS) on SEATURTLE.ORG. Projects from South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina helped to test the System and provided valuable feedback to help improve the System throughout the year. One of the primary reasons for developing the STNMS was to improve the efficiency of data collection. Individual users were able to enter data directly in to a centralized database where it was immediately available to state resource managers. So how did we do?
In past years the rate at which monitoring results were reported to each state has varied widely by state and individual beach. Some beaches sent information every week, some at the end of each month, and some at the end of the year. For 2009 a total of 3,468 nests were reported to the STNMS. The average time for individual nests to be entered in to the database was 4.1 days. There were small variations between states, with nests in South Carolina reported within 3.56 days, North Carolina within 4.54 days, and Georgia within 5.22 days.
There was lots of variation amongst beaches. The table shows the number of nests reported for each beach and the delay (in days) of reporting nest records to the database. A delay of zero indicates that all nests for that beach were reported on the same day they were recorded. Overall 1,538 (44%) nesting records were reported to the STNMS on the same day they were recorded, and 2,986 (86%) records were reported within 7 days.
With the help of hundreds of cooperators from all three states, the Sea Turtle Nest Monitoring System has been a huge success! To see the STNMS in action please visit: http://www.seaturtle.org/nestdb/.