Sea turtle population study in the coastal waters of North Carolina from 1988-06-07 to 2015-09-22 (NCEI Accession 0162846)

This data set contains sea turtle length and weight measurements, sex ratios, species composition, capture and release locations, tagging information, and information on biological samples collected for loggerhead, green, and Kemp's Ridley sea turtle populations in the coastal waters of North Carolina.

Sea turtles were double-tagged with Inconel Style 681 tags (National Band and Tag Company, Newport, Kentucky, USA) applied to the trailing edge of each rear flipper. Beginning in 1995, all turtles were additionally tagged with 125 kHz unencrypted Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags (Destron-Fearing Corp., South St. Paul, Minnesota, USA), injected subcutaneously above the second-most proximal scale of the trailing margin of the left front flipper to ensure identification of the turtle in the event that both Inconel tags were lost. SCL and CCL (notch-to-tip and notch-to-notch) along with SCW and CCW were measured and recorded to the nearest 0.1 cm. Blood samples were collected from the dorsal cervical sinus of the turtle, and skin samples were collected from the trailing edge of the rear flippers. Scute scrapings were collected from the edge of the carapace