HONU HEALTH ASSESSMENT AT 22 PBR (11/7/2023)
Exciting news: hatchling pit tagged 10 years ago was recovered
Six HPA STRP students, Laura Jim and Marc Rice traveled to 22 Puako Beach Road, Puako, Hawaii to capture, tag and perform a health assessment on honu in the shallow reef area. This is a site we have visited yearly for many years and is one of our main areas for conducting these types of assessments. We were joined by our long time friend and mentor, George Balazs and Brenda Jensen (Dean, Professor at Hawaii Pacific University) and Wendy Noritake (friend and marine conservationist from Kohala).
The weather was good (calm in the morning) little wind and clear skies. We got right to work after setting up the work site and we were able to capture and work up 9 honu by 1230 hours. The weather worsened a bit by then and the afternoon capture work proved less productive as onshore wind created some surf and made capture work more difficult. By 1500 hours we had captured and measured 12 honu. Seven of the 12 were recaptures and 5 were new captures. We tagged and numbered each turtle before they were released near where they were captured. All of the honu appeared healthy, with good body condition and no serious injuries or health issues.
The days captures: 7 recaptures and 5 new captures: Mean carapace length = 55 cm (22 inches) and mean weight was 24 kg (52.8 lbs)
