Copyright © Fundación Neotrópico 2024
Since year 2000 Neotropico Foundation takes and stores facial pictures of injured sea turtles. These specimens are rehabilitated in collaboration with Tenerife Island Council and its Wildlife Rescue Centre, called La Tahonilla. In year 2007 Neotropico Foundation registered PITMAR (Programa de Identificacion de Tortugas Marinas= Marine Turtle Identification Program by its acronym in spanish) as a copyrighted program.
To tell apart each turtle specimen, Neotropico Foundation uses a tagging technique known as photo-identification performed on the scale pattern of the temporal region of the turtle. This pattern is virtually unique in nature and combined with other data identifies individually each turtle from a potential population of hundreds of thousands.
The data set formed by the number of scales in this region, their shape and arrangement is unique to each turtle, as if it were a human fingerprint that only grows as the animal ages. Traumatic changes are possible in that area but the use of pictures from both head sides and the combination with the use of microchips make it the best system of universal tagging of sea turtles.
In PITMAR each point delimiting face scale polygons (called nodes) are used. The result is a cloud of points or nodes with a similar to a star constellation layout. With two correction factors (called marks), the algorithm homogenizes and compensates variations of the pattern over time and partially corrects mismatches caused by incorrect angle at the time of taking the pictures. Once the point clouds are compared, the program chooses the 15 registers with the highest number of matches and presents them to the operator for positive identifications.
If it is a new pattern, the specimen is not registered and the program can generate a new record with the information available.
If ia registered pattern is found, then it is a recapture and the data are stored in the sightings history for that turtle.
Anywhere in the world, with a simple digital camera and an Internet connection it will be able to know if a given turtle is registered and its history.
Decisions on international conservation measurements and law inforcement must be based on actual verifiable scientific data and the PITMAR provides free tools needed for this work.
Its potential spread covers tens of thousands of people all over the world becoming not only a program of scientific value but constituting a link for transnational collaboration and a helpful system for environmental awareness and education.
The PITMAR is freely accessible via internet, it is a non-invasive, non-traumatic, versatile and innovative system for tagging marine turtles.
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