Oviposition habitat is important to species with no protracted parental care. For sea turtles,
nest site selection may affect offspring fitness through microenvironmental characteristics
such as moisture, beach slope, temperature and grain size. Climate change and coastal
development will result in changes of nest site characteristics. In particular in Saudi Arabia,
with the advent of tourism, there will be development of giga-projects such as the crossborder
city of NEOM and luxury tourist resort ‘The Red Sea Project’. To evaluate the
different beach characteristics, we assessed the change in parameters over the nesting
season, differences in microenvironmental characteristics with regard to nest distribution
and compared differences between low- and high- density nesting sites in the central Red
Sea, during the 2019 nesting season. We sampled on a biweekly basis, taking various insitu
measurements and collecting sand samples to be analysed for grain size, moisture
content and colour. HOBO temperature loggers were deployed at sites where nesting
occurred. At our low- density sites nest distribution was dictated mainly by angle of beach
slope, ANOVA (P
| Date of Award | Apr 2020 |
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| Original language | English (US) |
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| Awarding Institution | - Biological, Environmental Sciences and Engineering
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| Supervisor | Michael Berumen (Supervisor) |
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