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"Fisheries, conservation, and long-term global change: the case of the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas)" by: Michelle María Early Capistrán

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 at 3:00pm to 4:00pm

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SMAST East 101-103 : 836 S. Rodney French Boulevard, New Bedford MA 02744
Callie Rumbut
c.rumbut@umassd.edu
https://umassd.zoom.us/j/93758230260

Seminar Announcement

Department of Fisheries Oceanography

 


"​Fisheries, conservation, and long-term global change: the case of the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas)"
​Dr. Michelle María Early Capistrán
​Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

Wednesday, September 23, 2026
3:00 - 4:00 pm
SMAST E 101-103 and via Zoom

Abstract:

Globally, green sea turtles have been a key source of food, medicine, and materials, and hold intangible cultural importance. In Baja California, Mexico, green turtles sustained human communities for millennia, until intensive, unregulated commercial harvest from 1960–1980 drove rapid population collapse. Following a nationwide capture ban in 1990, decades of conservation measures have led to population increases across the Eastern Pacific, with abundance approaching or exceeding historical baseline levels.

This decline and recovery trajectory was reconstructed using local ecological knowledge (LEK) and historical records, integrated with ecological monitoring data to estimate long-term catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) and establish a pre-exploitation baseline abundance. I discuss the technical challenges of this approach — including reconciling LEK-derived and scientific CPUE estimates — and how these methods can be applied to other long-lived, data-poor species.

As some green turtle populations recover globally, this trajectory is generating a complex set of management questions. Climate change is introducing new pressures on recovering populations, including nesting beach loss and foraging habitat degradation, while recovering populations are themselves generating novel ecological challenges, such as seagrass overgrazing and range expansion into novel habitats. This is coupled with increasing calls for renewed harvest in multiple jurisdictions (e.g., Hawai'i, Northwest Mexico, French Polynesia); whether renewed harvest is viable, and under what conditions, depends on highly variable socioeconomic, cultural, and governance contexts. Likewise, some countries have implemented locally-grounded approaches to sustainable harvest that may provide models for future management (e.g., Japan, Australia). Drawing on a 2026 workshop on sustainable use of sea turtles held at the International Sea Turtle Symposium in Kona, Hawai'i, I discuss how moving from blanket protection toward context-specific management will require transdisciplinary research — spanning ecology, social science, and governance — conducted in collaboration with local and Indigenous communities.

Join Meeting
https://umassd.zoom.us/j/93758230260
Note: Meeting ID and passcode required. Please email contact to obtain
For additional information, please contact Callie Rumbut at c.rumbut@umassd.edu