Key. These areas along with the Texas coast were important in the commercial fishery for green turtles at the end of the last century (9:32-33).
When Columbus arrived in the New World, there were perhaps fifty million green sea turtles in the Caribbean area. The greatest turtle rookery in the area was the Cayman Islands, and at the time sea turtles of various types were abundant throughout the seas of the world. In the Caribbean, breeding colonies have been wiped out one by one since the time of Columbus until only one great rookery remains, that at Tortuguero in Costa Rica, where about 20,000 greens nest each year (12:27-28). Green turtles once nested on nearly every shoreline of the Caribbean, but the population declined rapidly as European settlers made their way into the area. One of the primary reasons for the decline was simply that green turtles are good to eat. Ships of every type took turtles back on the voyage to Europe as a welcome relief from the food usually eaten on board ship. The turtles could be kept alive for months in the ships' holds without food or water. Whalers used thousands of giant Gallapagos tortoises as ballast because they could last in the hold for periods up to eighteen months and could be consumed for both food and oil (10:220-221).
Green turtles occupy three types of habitat: high-energy beaches, convergence zones in the pelagic habitat, and benthic feeding grounds in relatively shallow, protected waters. These are migratory creatures. The hatchlings leave the beach and apparently move into convergence zones in the open ocean, leaving their birthplace when they reach 20-25 cm in size and entering feeding grounds. Their foraging habitats seem to be most commonly pastures of seagrasses or algae, but they also include coral reefs, worm reefs, and rocky bottoms. Some feeding grounds support only particular size classes of green turtles, while others support a complete range (9:33).
Th...