HPA's Role

The Sea Turtle Research Program at HPA has been in existence since 1987 (www.hpa.edu/turtle) During that time we have worked cooperatively with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric A/dministrations National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS),  We have, when appropriate and possible, supported research objectives of the NMFS by providing logistical, material and scientific support.
The Hawaiian green turtle sex ratio project requires the collection of hundreds of blood samples from resident foraging green turtles and this is where HPA can help.  On April 8, 2019, a team of five
NOAA scientists traveled to HPA to conduct 4 days of education and tagging with Co-Directors of the HPA Sea Turtle Research Program Marc Rice and Laura Jim and students from the upper and middle school.

The 5 NOAA scientists gave 2 hours of presentations about their work in their particular areas of focus.  The last talk was presented by Dr. Camryn Allen, the PI of the sex ratio project.  She covered the ideas behind her sex ratio project and discussed the methodology that is being used to determine sex in each turtle using blood serum samples.  She also covered the rough outlines of what our field work would consist of and what the subsequent processing of the blood samples required.

All of the students that were to be involved in the capture work over the next three days were in attendance and learned a great deal about the various project ongoing at NOAA's Honolulu Lab.
The plan for the trips was to capture between 10 and 20 green turtles each day and draw a blood sample from each of them.  After each days capture work, the students and Camryn came back to the lab and centrifuged the blood, separated the serun from the cells and then put the serum samples in the liquid nitrogen freezer to transport back to Honolulu on Friday.