ShellBank is an innovative traceability toolkit and a global database of marine turtle DNA. Launched in late 2022 after a successful pilot phase, it provides comprehensive genetic profiles from marine turtle populations worldwide, crucial for tracing the origins of turtles, turtle parts and products back to the turtle populations impacted by threats, such as overexploitation, bycatch, and trade. By extracting DNA from any turtle, turtle part or product, we can compare them against the genetic profiles in the ShellBank database. This enhances our ability to identify how turtles are connected, which populations are most at-risk and those that require greatest protection, informing conservation management and law enforcement, ultimately strengthening management measures to recover turtle populations.

ShellBank uses DNA. Its ‘banks’ of data are a rapidly evolving global repository for marine turtle DNA. Comprising three main components  (Nesting, In-Water and Trade) ShellBank stores and uses data from many international partnerships to enable effective traceability. It is constantly being updated and contributed to by many collaborators. Data, primarily mined from published material, is verified by the ShellBank team and stored in the database. It is open source for the reference data (Nesting and In-Water), and privacy-protected for the Trade data, bolstering accessibility to users around the world.

 
With a complete database, we can finally understand what genetically distinct turtle populations we have, how they are interconnected, and which populations are most at-risk, such as those being unsustainably harvested, traded or incidentally caught in fisheries. By comparing across databases it will be possible to accurately trace the population origin, enhance a country’s enforcement efforts against illegal activity, and advance marine turtle conservation at national, regional and global levels. ShellBank’s intent and purpose has been refined over time, with a clear vision for growth.

Find out more about ShellBank project here.