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Successful management strategies are important for conservation and allow accurate surveying and monitoring of populations for presence, abundance, and trend. This becomes challenging for cryptic, low‐density species, and for animals that have complicated life histories where not every stage of the life cycle can be surveyed effectively. We used information from animal‐borne data loggers to characterize the dive‐surfacing behavior of cryptic loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) in the northwest Atlantic from 2009–2018. Our data covered a large geographic area off the east coast of North America, and allowed us to present estimates for and variation in 3 metrics that can be used to assess availability bias affecting visual surveys: average dive duration, average surface duration, and the proportion of time at the surface. We used a stochastic partial differential equation approach to construct spatiotemporal …