Possible Causes Responsible for Green Sea Turtle Hatchlings Mortality in Captivity

Green sea turtle Chelonia mydas is classified as endangered species due to population declining over last 141 years. Many efforts had been carried out to conserve and protect C. mydas and one of them is headstarting program. C. mydas head-starting programs in Malaysia are still at the infancy stage. In Sarawak, the first systematic C. mydas head-starting program started in June 2014 and scheduled to end in May 2016. Lack of experience and information has led to problems related to handling of the hatchlings during the first stage of this project. Almost 50% of the hatchlings have died between June to October, due to unknown reason. Therefore, this project is designed to assess the possible causes of C. mydas hatchlings death in captivity during this head-starting program. A total of 70 individuals of C. mydas hatchling carcasses were examined. For all hatchlings (n=70), 86% died due to biting mark, 39% due to shrinking plastron, 33% due to blue or red mark, 16% due to bloated and 11% due bacterial infection on eye. Only small and medium ranks of characters (injuries or deformities) were found on the hatchlings. MannWhitney test showed that there is no significance differences between both Tank A and Tank B. This showed that deaths of the hatchlings are likely to occur by chance and not influenced by the characters and the size of the character intensity