Green turtles (Chelonia mydas) are globally endangered and culturally significant to Indigenous Traditional Owners in northern Australia, yet fine-scale understanding of their foraging habitats remains poorly understood, especially along Australia's remote north-coast. This project mapped green turtle foraging habitats in the Northern Territory, through collaboration with Indigenous Traditional Owners and ranger groups, to assist with their sea country management.

Visual classifications of towed video transect data were used in a Support Vector Machine Learning Model to predict habitat in 379 km² of remotely sensed satellite imagery, overlapping the benthic habitats for two green turtle foraging grounds within the joint managed parks: Trepang Bay, Garig Gunak Barlu Marine Park, and Field Island, Kakadu National Park.

Algae and seagrass made up 30% of the Trepang Bay and 18.05% of the Field Island foraging turtle habitat. The classification accuracy of the model showed a high level of agreement at both sites (0.63 for Trepang Bay and 0.75 for Field Island). These habitats provide good foraging grounds for green turtles and the diversity of marine habitats also allows for a range of different age classes of green turtles to use these sites for a range of other behaviours, e.g. resting and predator avoidance.

The simplicity and repeatability of the field methods used in this study allow for future monitoring of marine habitats in remote areas by ranger groups. The findings are useful for conservation planning, including the development of management plans in the Northern Territory.