Protecting the 99% of a turtle's life spent at sea
A female sea turtle may spend less than 0.1% of her life on land, yet most conservation attention focuses on those few hours of nesting. The open ocean is where turtles grow, feed, migrate, and face their greatest threats. Understanding and protecting these vast marine environments is essential to any serious conservation strategy.
Satellite tracking & international protection
Establishing safe zones across the Caribbean & Pacific
Open-ocean cleanup & source reduction campaigns
Leatherback turtles swim from Caribbean nesting beaches to feeding grounds off Nova Scotia, a round trip of over 10,000 miles. Loggerheads born in Florida traverse the entire North Atlantic gyre before returning to nest as adults decades later. These migration corridors cross multiple national jurisdictions, making international cooperation essential. MTF supports satellite tagging programs that map these routes and advocates for their protection through organizations like the Inter-American Convention for the Protection and Conservation of Sea Turtles.
A turtle tagged on a beach in Tulum may spend the next year foraging near Cozumel, pass through waters off Honduras, and cross the Gulf of Mexico before returning to nest. No single country owns that journey. Satellite telemetry has transformed our understanding of these routes by showing that protection at a nesting beach, while critical, is insufficient if the corridors between feeding and nesting areas are full of fishing gear, plastic debris, and unregulated shipping traffic.
Our tagging programs operate in Costa Rica, Florida, and the Riviera Maya, and the data are shared with regional conservation bodies so that protection can be coordinated across borders. When a migration hotspot is identified, we push for seasonal fishing restrictions, shipping lane adjustments, or new marine protected areas in the right locations.
Marine Protected Areas are one of the most effective tools for ocean conservation. By restricting fishing, shipping, and industrial activity in critical habitats, MPAs give turtle populations space to recover. Our projects have contributed to the expansion of protected zones in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve, Cozumel Reefs National Marine Park, and Costa Rica's Cocos Island National Park.
Effective MPAs require enforcement, community support, and monitoring over time. We train local rangers, fund patrol boats and equipment, and publish annual reports on reef and turtle abundance inside and outside protected boundaries so that the public can see whether these designations are delivering results.
Plastic pollution poses a grave threat in the open ocean. Turtles mistake floating bags and balloons for jellyfish, a primary food source for leatherbacks. Microplastics accumulate in their digestive systems and may affect reproduction. MTF runs coastal and offshore cleanup operations, but emphasizes source reduction: working with businesses and governments to ban single-use plastics and improve waste management in coastal communities throughout Mexico, Central America, and Florida.
Cleanup alone cannot solve the problem. Every piece of plastic removed from a beach is a piece that should never have entered the environment. Our education campaigns target the habits and policies that put plastic in the water in the first place, from hotel amenity bottles to fishing gear disposal to inadequate municipal recycling.
Climate change is reshaping the ocean itself. Warming waters shift the distribution of prey species, forcing turtles to travel farther to feed. Ocean acidification weakens the shells of mollusks and crustaceans that some species depend on. Rising sea levels erode nesting beaches faster than they can reform naturally. Addressing these systemic threats requires global action on carbon emissions and local adaptation strategies like beach renourishment and shade structures to regulate nest temperatures.
Ocean conservation is not separate from beach conservation. It is the larger frame that makes beach work meaningful over the long term. Learn how these issues connect to specific places on our Riviera Maya and Seagrass & Coral Reefs pages.