Members of the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo (BAMZ) went turtle hunting last week - all in the name of conservation.

BAMZ members, along with government conservation officers from the US, St. Lucia, Grenada and all of the Caribbean British Overseas Territories joined forces in a Foreign and Commonwealth Office supported conservation course which studied endangered marine turtles specifically in Bermuda.

The workshop was co-ordinated by the Bermuda Turtle Project (BTP), a joint research project of the BAMZ and Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC).

All the participating government officers took part in the BTP's annual research, when each day for the past two weeks turtles were captured in 2,000 foot long nets, studied and then released back into the wild.

In addition to studying the captured turtles, the participants also conducted physiological research through autopsies of local turtles BAMZ has preserved.

"It was a great course," said Shannon Gore, an officer from the British Virgin Islands. "This is all part of an ongoing programme to really understand the green turtle. We conducted tests to understand its DNA structure in addition to the tagging, which is really going to be helpful in understanding the migratory path."

According to Ms Gore, the green turtles in Bermuda are in an early development stage and will stay here until a certain level of maturation.

"From here they head on down to places like Nicaragua to nest," said Ms Gore. "We managed to tag a big one which should be heading down south soon, so we'll be able to track him by satellite and find out exactly where he's going from here."

"This course is exciting for me because I have learned things I never knew before." said Carlos Sasso, fisheries officer with Anguilla's Department of Fisheries and Coastal Resource. "It's good that someone like me can learn these skills, take them home and pass them on to the others in the department. It's good for the staff and its good for the turtles, too."

The participants arrived in Bermuda last week to kick off the workshop, which is run by BTP co-ordinator Jennifer Gray and CCC research associates Drs. Peter and Anne Meylan.

"The workshop was highly intensive and the participants always go home with a huge amount of information, but each year we find we also learn from them, it's a two-way learning process," said Ms Gray. "We hope that the workshop inspires the participants to set up marine turtle conservation and research a projects back home and help the struggle to save the Caribbean's endangered turtle populations."