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Hello to all those child artists out there! This is just a reminder that the deadline for the cover contest is coming up soon ( APRIL 30TH ! ). So here’s all of the information again so you can submit your drawings soon! The winners will be announced at our annual Nest Fest event on Jekyll Island on May 3rd. They will also be informed via email and/or phone. Prizes will be awarded for 1st through 3rd place! Good luck to all!

~Maura Larson, Education Intern

April 19, 2008, marked the first annual
Shell-e-brate Earth Day event at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center! Over 500 guests were in attendance to make handmade paper, color their own grocery bag carapace, paint a masterpiece at the styrofoam plate press and peruse exhibitors tables to purchase earth-friendly items or get hands-on with adoptable pets and wildlife. Even the big kids came out to get their faces painted and have their photo taken in the Turtle Patrol car! Guest orator, 13-year-old Landon Frame wowed us with his self-written speech, The Sea Turtles Plight, while authors Barbara Bergwerf and Dorothy Carswell signed books close by.

Despite a few sprinkles of rain here and there, the Shell-e-bration went on as planned, ending with a raffle of unique items including a one-of-a-kind Jekyll Island Treasure.

This event would not have been possible without the help of our generous volunteers manning stations, handing out stickers, running to and fro and, of course, our husbandry volunteers who were busy caring for our turtles! We couldn’t have done this without you!

If you missed Shell-e-brate Earth Day this year, mark your calendars for 2009. You won’t want to miss it!

Sea Turtle Mortality Event Workshop held on St. Catherines Island

A workshop was held on St. Catherines Island on March 31 and April 1. St. Catherines Island Foundation (SCIF) hosted the workshop. Dr. Terry Norton, Director of Veterinary Services for the GSTC and SCIF, was the workshop coordinator. The purpose of the workshop was to critically evaluate a loggerhead sea turtle mortality event that occurred in the fall of 2006 and bring a group of experts together to discuss the event and come up with a draft of standardized guidelines for future mortality events occurring in the Southeastern US. Participants included sea turtle biologists from Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, a toxicologist, a marine algal toxin specialist, a sea turtle pathologists, sea turtle specialists from NOAA, and clinical veterinarians, technicians, and rehabilitators involved with the care of these turtles.

Over approximately a one month time span, a large number (approximately 150) of loggerhead sea turtles stranded on the Georgia and NE Florida coast. The turtles were in good body condition and had elevated glucose levels, very slow heart rates, and were very non-responsive. The GSTC cared for 2 cases during the summer of 2007, “Baily” and “Marina” that were afflicted with this condition. Unfortunately, both turtles succumbed to their illness. Extensive diagnostic testing failed to reveal the cause of this condition. Treatment was only successful in a limited number of cases. We are stilling seeing similar cases sporadically. Although diagnostic testing for the known marine algal toxins (brevetoxins (“red tide”), domoic acid, and saxotoxins) has been exhausted, we still suspect a yet to be determined marine algal toxins could be the cause of this event.

In 2001, a similar mortality event involving loggerheads occurred in South Florida. Until this workshop was held, this event was thought to be significantly different from the event under discussion. We now feel that it is very likely that the underlying cause of mortality is the same for both events.

The first day of the workshop involved a series of lectures to update the group on the mortality and the second day was spent in a round table discussion to plan further diagnostics with remaining specimens that had been retrieved from turtles involved with the 2006 stranding event. Furthermore, standardized protocols are being developed by the participants of the workshop to evaluate future cases of stranded turtles with this condition. Lastly, the group outlined standardized protocols and procedures that need to take place in future mortality events in the southeastern US.

Dr. Terry Norton, Director of Veterinary Services

So the rumors were true! Thursday night we had been joined by a local group of children called the Eagle Boys and three Peace Corps volunteers for patrol. We weren’t finding much by way of nesting moms but then much to our surprise we stumbled across Mr. Leatherback!

He said that he wanted to take a chance to get to know the local members of the SWOT team and spend some time learning about the program. That is where the adventure began! For those of you that don’t know SWOT stands for State of the Worlds turtles and is a collaborative of projects collecting sea turtle data around the world. The St. Kitts Sea Turtle Monitoring Network is one of these projects. Their information can be checked out here:

We had a great time with Mr. Leatherback, his friends Rod and Brian from Conservation International and the Eagle Boys on the beach, but then on Friday we had another adventure waiting for us! We started off early Friday morning with inwater tagging, where we all snorkeled out and caught foraging greens and hawksbills. Any that were caught got a health assessment, new id tags, and released. The SKSTMN is using this information to establish an idea of the local populations!

Afterwards, Mr. Leatherback wanted to help us spread the word about the importance of sea turtle conservation, and Dr. Stewart was amazingly able to get us on both the news and in the paper at last moment’s notice! We met with the Fisheries department and talked about the importance of sea turtle conservation and then we spent time at The Circus in Basseterre spreading the sea turtle word!

We then took Mr. Leatherback to the islands famous Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park so he could see as much of the island as possible before he had to leave! He did have time to pose for some pictures with the amazing view!

We thought that we had a day better than could be imagined but Rod and Brian had a surprise in store! They presented Dr. Stewart with a flip video which will enable the team here to take footage and download it directly to the internet to help with educational campaigns!

Before Mr. Leatherback left we asked where he was off to next and he mumbled something about turtlevision online video and a Caribbean migration. We’ll all have to check his website in the coming weeks as I bet he’ll be posting pictures from this migration he’s on!

Speaking of migrations, I have a rather large swim in front of me as I’m back at the center on Monday morning! I better get my flippers moving!

~ Jeannie Miller, Aquarist - on location St. Kitts, West Indies

Join me in the Turtle Crawl May 3rd!

Okay, I finally caved to the challenges and registered for the annual Turtle Crawl triathlon on Jekyll Island, May 3, 2008. It’s an Olympic distance tri (1,500m swim (almost a mile), 40 km bike (25 miles) and 10k run (6.2 miles) - a perfect blend of speed and endurance (of which I have neither!). It’s been years since I’ve done more than run across the street but once upon a time I was a pretty decent marathoner and triathlete (see photos from the Pinehurst Olympic Distance Triathlon a few years ago where I’m actually smiling!) so it was just too hard too pass up this opportunity to support the Georgia Sea Turtle Center in this event even if it means drowning off the beautiful beaches or collapsing along the scenic roadways of Jekyll Island. There will be a number of talented athletes and a lot of very dedicated “weekend warriors” who’ve been training for this event and I’m proud to run alongside (well, okay, BEHIND) them - my goal is simply to survive and maybe finish before the 4 ½ hour time limit.

If you’re not quite so adventurous as to join the triathlon, please at least come support all these dedicated people who are torturing their bodies to support the GSTC and stay to have some fun with us in the annual Nest Fest that afternoon where the GSTC team and many of our colleagues from the area will have crafts/games/exhibits and lots of family-oriented fun about our local ecosystem. We’ll even be releasing 3 of the sea turtle patients from the Georgia Sea Turtle Center that day!!

The triathlon begins at 7:30 and Nest Fest begins at noon. For more info, please visit the Jekyll Island Website.

See you there!

-Bill
Dr. Bill Irwin, Director

So my adventures here in St. Kitts have been amazing! Seeing all those nesting mothers on the beach has been breathtaking. The incredible experience I’m having doesn’t end there though!

Today, Dr. Stewart, Research Assistant Sara Ramirez and myself were guests at the St. Kitts and Nevis Defense Force Cadet Corps meeting. We were provided the opportunity to talk about the turtles that are found here, the nesting program, and with the long distance help of the GSTC education staff we even “rescued” our own turtle from marine debris!

The students were great and had some pretty incredible questions. At the end of the program the students had prepared a special thank you for us and selected a cadet to come forward and read it. It was awesome to be so appreciated by them!

Well the adventures continue and I’m headed off to patrol for the evening! Rumor has it a Mr. Leatherback may be swimming into town…

~Jeannie Miller, Aquarist - on location in St. Kitts, West Indies

Even after studying sea turtle navigation for 10 years I have no explanation for this. Bev, who was stranded near Panama City Beach, FL, spent a year there in treatment at Gulf World, was transported to the GSTC on Jekyll Island, Ga (over land, by vehicle), spent a few months here, was transported back to PCB, FL (over land, by vehicle) and released in November 2007, has actually found her way back to Jekyll Island!! Is this a coincidence? Probably. But it sure does show that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction!

Dr. Bill Irwin, Director

Above: Bev’s entire satellite track. [Note: the dotted line across south FL is the tracking program's best interpretation of the data because she was really cruising when she went around the end and we only received sporadic, low-quality transmissions.]

Below: The last few days.

Keep track of her movements at SEATURTLE.ORG:
http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?tag_id=80060

As migratory reptiles, sea turtles spend the majority of their lives performing some amazing feats of navigation, from hatchlings leaving the nest, to juveniles finding suitable foraging habitats, to adults returning to their natal beach to nest. How do they do it? What cues do they use? Would YOU be able to survive as a sea turtle? Come join Georgia Sea Turtle Center’s Director Dr. Bill Irwin as he presents information from his doctoral dissertation (Magnetic Orientation and Magnetoreception in hatchling loggerhead Sea Turtles) and other information about the sensory abilities of sea turtles. Learn how GSTC researchers and other scientists track turtle movements all over the world.

With the summer fast approaching there is lots of excitement about the upcoming turtle nesting season, myself and four other lucky members of the GSTC family are spending some time during this nesting season a bit differently. We will be heading to St. Kitts in the Caribbean to lend a helping flipper to the St. Kitts Sea Turtle Monitoring Network. I arrived here on April 11th and we will continue to send some GA turtle power down to assist with peak leatherback nesting season until June.

Dr. Norton and Dr. Stewart formed a collaborative with Ross University in 2005 and started performing nest monitoring, health assessments and training workshops for veterinarians in the Caribbean. With the completion of the GSTC and the hospitality of Dr. Stewart we have been able to expand the collaborative to include sending some additional flippers to Dr. Stewart to help with the nesting program. We also plan to continue the veterinary training workshops as well!

Upon arrival here I jumped right in assisting with nightly patrols and tagging of the female leatherbacks that come to nest on Cayon to Keys Beach here on St. Kitts. Much like what we do at Jekyll Island, we hit the beach at approx. 8:00pm and then patrol (on foot!) until 6:00am. Any females that are encountered are given a complete physical exam, get blood taken for a health assessment, and a new pair of tags for identification. Nest location is also recorded, and eggs are relocated if they are deemed not to be in a safe location.

Last night, we were treated to an extra special event! We stepped foot on the beach and found 8 crawls! It was practically a leatherback arribada! We quickly processed those and then the long night was on. At 4:00am, we decided it was time to head home after one last lap. On our way back to the vehicles we saw a female just starting to make her way up out of the water. We sat and watched as she found her way up the beach and started to dig. Once she started laying eggs we jumped into action and tagged her, did her exam, and took all the needed data. Her carapace alone was approx. 5 feet long! We thought it couldn’t get any better but then the sun started to come up and we were treated again! We got to watch this lovely lady return to her watery home in the daylight. She surfaced 4 or 5 times on her way out as we danced happily across the beach!

There was time for one last picture of the weary but ecstatic team before we found our way off the beach and into our beds!

What an adventure this all is! I’m very fortunate to be able to have this experience and the honor to represent the GSTC and to work with the Dr. Kimberly Stewart and her great team that comprise the St. Kitts Sea Turtle Monitoring Network!

~Jeannie Miller, Aquarist- on location in St. Kitts, West Indies!