A new agreement has been signed by two environmental organisations to help improve protection for turtles.

It is hoped that memorandum of understanding between the Sargasso Sea Commission and the Inter-American Sea Turtle Convention will create more effective conservation efforts.

David Freestone, the executive secretary of the SSC, was delighted by the agreement.

“Turtles have always been a flagship species for us,” Dr Freestone said. “They really cannot live without the Sargasso Sea.”

Verónica Caceres, executive secretary for the Inter-American Sea Turtle Convention, added that a working group would be created to draft a work plan setting out opportunities for collaboration between the bodies.

Walter Roban, the Deputy Premier and the Minister of Home Affairs, said: “In the early 1600s, Bermuda passed some of the first conservation legislation in the new world – and it was for turtles, to make sure that too many young turtles weren't harvested before they had the chance to reproduce,” he said.

“I'm happy to say that the work of the Bermuda Aquarium Museum and Zoo, and the Bermuda Turtle Project, the world's longest-running monitoring programme for intermediate-stage turtles, provided useful resources to that initial concept note.

“I look forward to the new strides that can be made in turtle conservation with the signing of this MOU.”

The Sargasso Sea is considered a critical environment for turtles in the Atlantic, providing a crucial ecosystem used by all five Atlantic sea turtle species.