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The green turtle, the most common sea turtle in Bermuda's waters, once nested abundantly on our beaches. William Strachy's narrative of 1610 noted "even then the Tortoyses came in again, laying their eggs (of which we should find five hundred at a time in the opening of a shee turtle) in the sand by the sea shoare." New World explorers wrote of huge herds of turtles. The explorers would capture many of the turtles, which were capable of remaining alive for weeks in the holds of their ships, providing fresh and nutritious meals for their long ocean voyages.
In 1610, settlers noted that "on the shores of Bermuda, Hogges, Turtles, Fish and Fowle do abound as dust of the earth." With recorded takes of more than 40 turtles per boat per day, it was not long before the local stocks of sea turtles were noticeably depleted. In 1620, only eleven years after Bermuda's colonization, an act of the Bermuda Assembly against the killing sea turtles was passed.
This may well be the New World's first written conservation legislation.
In spite of this early protection of young turtles, larger turtles were fished until 1973. If our forefathers knew then what we know now - that sea turtles take up to fifty years to reach maturity - then they surely would have protected turtles of a larger size and our nesting population may not have become extinct in the early 1800s.
In an attempt to reestablish a nesting population in Bermuda, over twenty-five thousand green turtle eggs were transplanted from Costa Rica in the 1960s and 70s by the Caribbean Conservation Corporation and buried on beaches in Bermuda. More than sixteen thousand of these eggs hatched. Knowing that turtles return to the beach on which they were born to lay their eggs, it is hoped that these animals will eventually return to reproduce in Bermuda. No means of determining age in sea turtles has been perfected, but scientists believe that it takes up to fifty years for a green turtle to reach sexual maturity. If this is the case, turtles could arrive to recolonize Bermuda any time within the next twenty years. Studies were made on the behaviour of these hatchlings by Jane Frick. She found that, upon release, the hatchlings all took a direct course to the southwest away from the island and out into the open ocean. This work heightened local awareness and led to further legislation in 1973. Since that time, all sea turtles have been completely protected locally.
The Bermuda Turtle Project was initiated in 1968 by Dr. H. Clay Frick II, Trustee of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, in cooperation with the Bermuda Government. Since Dr. Frick's retirement in 1991, the project has been under the direction of the Bermuda Government Aquarium, Museum and Zoo, in collaboration with the Caribbean Conservation Corporation.
 The shallow reefs and turtle grass flats of Bermuda provide excellent grazing areas for the green turtles that are the main subject of this research project. The turtle tagging project is one of the longest-running projects of this kind in the world. It has developed into a multi-faceted study of sea turtles.
The primary aim of the Bermuda Turtle Project is to fill in critical information gaps in the life history of the green turtle and to make that information available to professionals and lay people alike.
In order to protect green turtles, we must know where they occur, in what numbers, at what times, and what factors contribute to their mortality. In essence, population and life history models need to be refined to include all that we can learn about their entire life cycle. The special contribution that the Bermuda Turtle Project can make is to elucidate the biology of green turtles in developmental habitats.
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