On behalf of the GSTC Staff, we hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! This weekend, the GSTC Education Staff and Volunteers participated in Jekyll Island’s Christmas Tree Lighting Festival. We had a variety of preserved sea turtle specimens for everyone to see and had a craft table for kids. We hope everyone had as much fun as we did!

The kid’s craft, ‘Recycled Art: Sea Turtle Ornaments‘ provided a preview to December’s Craft of the Month which will be available every day in the Exibit Gallery through December! So come on by the GSTC and make a sea turtle ornament for YOUR tree! (November’s Craft is the ‘Paperplate Turtle’ and will be available at the Center for the remainder of the month!)

Thanks to the Volunteers who helped out: Leigh Anne Harden, Rebecca Taylor, and Griffin Eckert as well as our Education Intern: Sarah Mathias…we couldn’t do these events (or be as successful) without you!!!

(L to R: Griffin Eckert, Sarah Mathias, Stefanie Ouellette, Leigh Anne Harden, Rebecca Taylor, Alicia Marin)

Sincerely,
Stefanie Ouellette, Education and Field Coordinator
Alicia Marin, Public Outreach Educator

Bev recovered from her illness much more quickly than expected so we were able to release her this fall as the water in the Gulf of Mexico (where Bev came from) stayed warm enough for her to be released safely. We rushed to get her transmitter and luckily our colleague Mark Dodd from GA DNR had everything on hand that we needed to apply it to Bev’s carapace. Bev’s satellite transmitter was applied at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Sunday, November 18 and she was driven to a beach on the Florida panhandle, west of Panama City Beach on Monday morning (see next post). The photos below show the transmitter being attached, a flipper tag being attached (she also received a PIT tag) and Bev swimming in her rehab tank sporting her new hardware.

The Georgia Sea Turtle Center hosted our first birthday party on November 10, 2007! We are honored that Georgia Waters (pictured in purple), an aspiring sea turtle biologist, chose the GSTC as the place to celebrate her 5th birthday! Georgia chose the “Nifty Nesters” program to be the theme of her party.

The party first began with a brief presentation about the nesting behavior of sea turtles, complete with each child being transformed into a sea turtle, using real specimens. Then, our little “sea turtle biologists” preformed a nest excavation in search of sea turtle eggs (ping pong balls). We also created our own sea turtle nests and later played “put-the-hatchling-in-the-nest” (a sea turtle themed version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey).

Before a tour of the GSTC and visit to the hospital, it was time for cake and presents. In addition to a plush sea turtle from the GSTC staff, Georgia received lots of great gifts and had the most fabulous sea turtle cake we’ve ever seen! A turtle-riffic time was had by all, and the GSTC would like to thank Georgia, her friends and her family for allowing us to help Georgia celebrate her 5th birthday.

Are YOU looking for a way to celebrate your child’s birthday? Bring them to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center! We offer 3 birthday packages and a variety of themes to choose from! It’s a great way to celebrate a birthday AND help sea turtles! Cost varies by package and includes general admission. For more information, please visit our website or call the GSTC Education Team at (912)635-4076.

Alicia Marin, Public Outreach Educator
Sarah Mathias, Education Intern

Are you looking for something fun and educational that the whole family can enjoy? Then come on down to the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. Every Saturday at 10:30am and 1:30pm join the fun as we read turtle inspired stories and make creative crafts! There’s a new book and craft every month! This month we’ll be reading My Little Book of Painted Turtles and making turtle shakers! Activities are free with admission! So come on down for an educational and fun journey through the lives of sea turtles! And don’t forget to check out our patients!

~Sarah Mathias, Education Intern

With the growing excitement for, and the successful release of Bev this afternoon some of you may be wondering what is happening with the rest of our sea turtle patients here at the sea turtle center.

Griffin is our newest sea turtle patient here at the center. He originally stranded off Daytona beach and was taken to the Volusia County Marine Science Center. He is unable to dive and can not eat on his own. After several weeks, the staff there decided that they would like to transfer him here to see if new eyes could help find the mystery problem. We recieved him and after some initial xrays found he has a lot of gas in his GI tract and are treating him for a bacterial infection. We are also tube feeding him twice a day until he begins eating again on his own.

Dylan is doing quite well, he has started eating live pray regularly. However, because he is an unexperienced migrator and the waters off of our coast are rapidly getting cold we have decided to release him early next year once the waters again warm up. We want him to have lots of time to enjoy our coast before he has to migrate. We will equip him with a satellite transmitter so that we will be able to track him after release.

Sage, our green hatchling that was affected by red tide, is hanging in there and has started to dive and eat much better! He is still pretty thin so we are going to hang on to him until he is ready to go!

Number 11, our straggler loggerhead hatchling is growing by leaps and bounds. We have started to do enrichment with him the same way we do with our larger sea turtles. He gets a small amount of fish frozen into an icecube. He may soon be getting a new name as well as taking his first trip to a new home elsewhere at the center.

Amelia, our other loggerhead hatching that was affected by red tide is also growing by leaps and bounds. She is also recieving icecubes for enrichment. She, however, is being prepared for release! We are currently trying to find a way to get her to the gulf stream, which is turning out to be quite a challenge! Once we have secured some first class transportation we will be able to take her home!

~ Jeannie Miller Aquarist

The time has come…
She’s ready to go…
Bevelyn is getting released!!!!
We will be celebrating BEV’S BON VOYAGE all weekend in anticipation of her upcoming release! So come to the GSTC this weekend to say ‘goodbye’ to Bev! We’ll have a kid’s craft table, a giant turtle card for everyone to sign,as well as our regularly scheduled programs!

Here’s the plan:
Sunday, November 18: at approximately 2pm Bev will have a satellite transmitter secured to her carapace (shell).
Monday, November 19: BEV’S RELEASE DATE! At approximately 6am, GSTC Staff will leave Jekyll Island to transport Bevelyn back to Panama City, Florida (where she came from!) for her release back into the Gulf!

Hope to see you all this weekend!!

Stefanie Ouellette
Education and Field Coordinator

Join us Tuesday, November 13th for Turtle Tales as we read My Little Book of Painted Turtles! Join the fun as we read, play, and explore together. Get creative as we make turtle inspired crafts! Get the chance to live your life as a sea turtle in our exhibit gallery and to see our turtle patients in the hospital! Space is limited and reservations are recommended.

For more information or to register for a Turtle Tales program please call (912)635-4444.

~Sarah Mathias, Education Intern

Thank you to all the visitors and volunteers that participated in the GSTC’s first annual Turtleween to make it a great success! It was great to see so many children (and parents) dressed in costume! Costume contests were held every hour so everyone could see these wonderful costumes! Two brothers had the most creative, homemade turtle costumes, which they colored themselves! They definitely won our hearts! (bottom right)

Visitors were ‘trick-or-treated’ to turtle-inspired, environmentally friendly games, crafts and activites including the sea turtle survival game and turtle toss (bean bags that is, not real turtles!), find a hatching, mystery boxes and paper plate turtles, face painting, pumpkin painting and cookie decorating! For those that didn’t have a treat bag, no worries, they got to make their own!

Some of the staff dressed in costumes with an educational message: What do different species of sea turtles like to eat?

(L to R): Dr. Bill Irwin (Director): SQUID-FAVORITE FOOD OF THE KEMP’S RIDLEY SEA TURTLE; Stefanie Ouellette (Education and Field Coordinator): SPONGE-FAVORITE FOOD OF THE HAWKSBILL SEA TURTLE; Alicia Marin (Public Outreach Educator): SEA GRASS-FAVORITE FOOD OF THE GREEN SEA TURTLE; Sarah Mathias (Education Intern): JELLYFISH-FAVORITE FOOD OF THE LEATHERBACK SEA TURTLE; and last but not least, Cade Stepp (JIA)-BYCATCH. Ok that’s not a food item for sea turtles, but it IS a sea turtle conservation issue!

Thanks again to all the volunteers: Sonya & Laurel Russell, Sally Rose, Richard Chewning (4-H), Mark Miller, Kathy Smith, Chad & Megan Glasscock, Ruth Ann Blackwell and daughter, John Miller (JIA), Cade Stepp (JIA)…we couldn’t have done it without you!!!

Stefanie Ouellette
Education and Field Coordinator

Macaroni is usually the first patient of the day to be treated. If you come at 11:00 when the talking treatments program begins, you will mostly likely see a funny, soft-shelled turtle sitting on the treatment table with a towel draped over his face. This is Macaroni. He is a pugnacious Florida soft shell turtle that was found on St. Simons Island. He was hit by a car and brought into a local veterinarian who called us. Unfortunately for Macaroni, he had his right rear leg barely attached to his body! The Georgia Sea Turtle Center’s veterinarian, Dr. Terry Norton, did an emergency amputation surgery that night! The turtle has since then been recovering with a few bumps in the road. He is eating on his own, but in order to get him to eat we must soak him only half way in water, keeping his rear half from getting wet. Macaroni has an infection in the amputation site that caused us to treat his wound as an open wound for the time being and he may need to have the femur of the leg removed in the near future! If you are interested in learning more about Macaroni, please come stop by the sea turtle center! He does usually get his treatment first thing in the morning (around 11:00 o’clock), but because this is a hospital all times are subject to change! We’ll keep you updated on Macaroni’s progress!

The sea turtle center has 5 sea turtle patients! When you visit, you may only see three of them. The other two patients are two hatchlings that were brought to the center from Florida, but at different times. The first was a turtle brought from Amelia Island, Florida. Her name, consequently, is Amelia! She was very lethergic when first brought in and emaciated. She was immediately placed on antibiotics and fluids and has since improved. She is eating well on her own at this point and especially loves sea food bits on the bottom of her tank to dive after!

Our other sea turtle patient that is not seen from the rehab pavillion is a small green sea turtle named “Sage”. Sage came to us from Florida as well. She was also thin and inactive when she arrived and has perked up as well. Sage is not quite the eater than Amelia is, although she does love her shrimp. Sage is still on antibiotics and is weighed daily to closely monitor her progress.

Both turtles are fed three times during the day. If you see someone sitting on a ladder near a cart holding a bamboo skewer, you’re watching our smaller patients being fed! If you’d like to see more of our patients close up - sign up for the Monday morning behind the scenes talk and you may get a change to encounter our smaller and more shy animals!