Eastern Adriatic coast is one of the most indented in Europe, with 66 inhabited and 652 uninhabited islands and more than 6000 km long (CRKVENCIC - BOJCIC, 1993). For mentioned aquatorium, status of marine turtles was unknown until recently. Except for a few items of sporadic and poorly documented data in the literature relating to a few records of individual specimens, there were no other data of any kind.
The first published notice in "Die Amphibien der österr. Monarchie" by ERBER (1864)
was the Loggerhead Turtle data (Caretta caretta), which was also mentioned in BRUSINA's
(1878) papers. Some notes were published by KOLOMBATOVIC (1881, 1882), as a part of an
index of the fishes, amphibians, reptiles and mammals of the Split area, where the Loggerhead
Turtle was mentioned as "not rare", often caught by fishermen, and sometimes specimens
weighed even more than 100 kg. 
Two examples of the Green turtle (Chelonia mydas), described
as a very rare species by STOSSICH (1880), was the first data until that time in the Adriatic.
On September 24th, 1894, a Leathery Turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) was caught by local
fishermen near Budva (former Dalmatia, today Monte Negro, Yugoslavia), as the third species
of marine turtles described in the Adriatic (KOSIC, 1896).
These three species were mentioned in several scientific and popular articles, as well as in museum and fauna catalogues during the second half of the 19th century (FABER, 1883; KATURIĆ, 1883; KOLOMBATOVIĆ, 1886, 1895; DEPOLI, 1898; DAMIN, 1889; KOSIĆ, 1899), and continued through the first part of the 20th century (RöSSLER 1904; BRUSINA, 1907; KRUMBACH, 1917; BABIĆ, 1920; BOLKAY, 1924; HIRTZ, 1927, 1932; VATOVA, 1928; KARAMAN, 1939), until today (CVITANIĆ, 1956; CRNKOVIĆ, 1957; GASTON, 1960; RIEDL, 1963; PAVLETIĆ, 1964; POZZI, 1966; PETROVIĆ, 1970; DŽUKIĆ, 1972; MARCUZZI, 1972; BRELIH & DŽUKIĆ, 1974; BRUNO, 1978; HENLE, 1980; ČEPE, 1983; LAPINI, 1984; MRŠIĆ, 1987; LIPEJ et al., 1987; DE LUCA et al., 1990).
Despite numerous authors who were giving some data on marine turtles in the eastern Adriatic Sea, it was not possible to have a picture on biology and ecology of this endangered animals at all. Furthermore, until recently, marine turtles were without basic legal protection in the Croatia, although Croatia was participating party of Barcelona Convention.
Because of such poor knowledge on marine turtles in the Adriatic, the Adriatic Marine Turtle Program was started.