Introduction
The identification of individuals within population and the collection of reliable information on distribution, habitat use, or life history traits, are the minimum required for behavioural and ecological studies of a species. Most studies on marine turtle populations rely on standard “capture-mark-recapture” methods based on tagging (flipper tags or Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags), which is costly, induces stress to the animal, and uses tags do not last for a lifetime ( ). Tags are also difficult to apply to marine animals, such as turtles, that spend most of their time on foraging grounds and at sea. For these animals, most of the “capture-mark-recapture” studies are conducted on the beach during nesting as the females can be easily manipulated.