Nesting females are tagged using titanium flipper tags to enable the identification of individual females. Two tag series have been used in Tanzania with tag prefixes TA and TZ. To date, most flipper tagging has been done on an opportunistic basis. However, in 2012 Sea Sense conducted the first saturation tagging programme in Juani Island, Mafia District during the peak nesting months of April and May to collect data on clutch frequencies, nest site fidelity and inter-nesting intervals.

The survey provided the first data on clutch frequencies and duration of inter-nesting intervals of any nesting population in Tanzania. The tagging programme will be repeated in 2013. More than half of all recorded green turtle nests in Tanzania are laid in Juani Island so data from a continuous and focused monitoring programme can also be used to determine population sizes at other nesting sites in Tanzania where only track counts are available.

Sea Sense has recently embarked on the first ever sea turtle satellite tracking project in Tanzania. Seven satellite tags have been deployed on nesting green turtles. Following attachment of the tags, all of the turtles stayed close to their nesting beaches and went on to lay further clutches. One turtle named Sunday, went on to lay an impressive seven clutches!

Five of the turtles migrated to foraging grounds within Tanzania. The remaining two turtles continued north along the East African coast. Mwisho has reached her foraging ground just north of Mombasa in Kenya while Zianna is still heading north and is currently following the Somali coastline towards the horn of Africa.  These are the first migratory corridors ever identified for turtles nesting in Tanzania.

Three of the tags were funded by the South West Indian Ocean Fisheries Project (SWIOFP) which is an ambitious region wide project focusing on the development of sustainable fisheries. SWIOFP has also funded the deployment of satellite tags in Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Seychelles and Mauritius to help identify important foraging grounds in the region and assess the level of sea turtle interactions with industrial fisheries during the migratory period. The remaining four tags were generously funded by WWF.