SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) –Conservationists, researchers and anyone else with an Internet hookup can now track five sea turtles as they leave nesting grounds in South Carolina and migrate through the Atlantic or Caribbean.

People signing on to the Caribbean Conservation Corporation’s Web site (www.cccturtle.org) can follow the loggerhead turtles’ feeding, migrating and nesting patterns. The five turtles, tagged at South Carolina’s Cape Island recently week, are tracked by satellite through transmitters attached to their shells.

“In addition to where the turtles are going, it’s important to know how they’re getting there and whether they are running into areas of heavy commercial fishing activity or shrimping,” the group’s executive director, David Godfrey, said Friday.

Speaking by telephone from the nonprofit group’s office in Gainsville, Florida, Godfrey said the effort will help researchers understand the endangered marine reptiles’ habits at sea.

The turtles come ashore once every two or three years to lay their eggs on beaches in the Caribbean and southern United States. But once they return to sea, researchers have little clue as to how they survive and where they spend most of their lives.

Caribbean Conservation has teamed up with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources to study and report on the animals in hopes of raising awareness about the endangered turtles and of finding out where they are in the most danger.

In the past two decades, the population of sea turtles has fallen, and some species are near extinction. The largest sea turtles — the leatherbacks –are dwindling, and the Kemp’s Ridleys are in danger of dying out, researchers say.

Conservation efforts have helped boost Kemp’s Ridleys, which nest only on a beach in Rancho Nuevo, Mexico, raising their numbers to 6,000 last year after researchers counted just 1,000 in the late ’80s.