The Georgia Sea Turtle Center would like to welcome one an all to the Jekyll Island Foundation’s (JIF) Sea Turtle Weekend, coming up this Friday, Saturday and Sunday! There are lots of things happening this weekend all around Jekyll and hope you’ll be around to enjoy some of them! Please contact the Jekyll Island Foundation at 912-635-4420 or visit http://www.jekyllislandfoundation.org/ for more information about these events.

What does this have to do with the Georgia Sea Turtle Center? Glad you asked! The Georgia Sea Turtle Center will have extra activities, including games and crafts, available at the Center from 1pm-4pm on Saturday, June 28. Not to mention, our Patient of the Year contest will conclude this weekend and the winner will be announced! Please see our Patient of the Year BLOG by Kelly O’Keefe for more information on this contest and come to the Center to purchase your $1 donation card and cast your vote for Patient of the Year!

JIF Sea Turtle Weekend registered participants can use your card to gain free admission to the GSTC and all the extra activities on Saturday 1-4pm! If you do not have a Sea Turtle Weekend card, that’s ok too! The event is free with paid admission! And it’s not all that bad…besides being inexpensive, all proceeds (admissions, gift shop purchases, adoptions, memberships, etc.) go to support the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, including it’s turtle patients, directly!

Also on Saturday…and you’re not going to want to miss this...we are going to release some of our sea turtle patients that have been successfully rehabilitated and are ready to rejoin the wild population! We have not gotten the final word on which turtles will be released, but we do know that it will be some (1-5) of our smaller, juvenile Kemp’s Ridley and Green sea turtles! Because these turtles are still pretty small (relative to adult-sized sea turtles), they will not be receiving satellite transmitters. The transmitters are almost bigger than they are in some cases! The release is set to take place at 1pm on Saturday, June 28 on the beach in front of the Convention Center on Jekyll and is open to the public for viewing! There will be a roped of area at the release site and space is on a first come, first serve basis. (Picture: from Nest Fest May 3, 2008: Tweety (Kemp’s Ridley)and Kermit (Green) were released)

We hope to see you at the GSTC and the turtle release this weekend!

Sincerely,

Stefanie Ouellette

Education and Field Coordinator

What’s going on with Bevelyn?

If you’ve been tracking Bevelyn through our website on seaturtle.org since her release in Nov 2007, you might have noticed that she stopped transmitting a signal on May 29, 2008. Please don’t be discouraged…all hope is not lost! While it is true we can no longer track her on her amazing journey(s) it is likely that one of two things happened: She was mating and the antenna got clipped (less likely) or she nested a couple of times and the transmitter battery died (more likely).

A wise and knowledgeable person explained it to me like this:

Let’s think of your cell phone and it’s battery for a minute. When you use the cell phone, it uses some of the battery’s energy, a little bit at a time, but only when you use the phone. Now think about when you have no signal bars, and the phone is searching and searching for a signal. It burns up the battery pretty quickly, right? Now how does that apply to Bev’s satellite transmitter? Read on and find out!

The transmitter is “on” all the time but only transmits when the salt water switch is open (i.e. she’s above the water). When that happens, the transmitter (more accurately called a Platform Transmitter Terminal or PTT) sends a burst transmission every 45 – 60 seconds. Keeping in mind that the PTT needs to be out of the water for almost a minute BEFORE it sends its first transmission, the chances of it transmitting are slim if the turtle is actively swimming and only coming up for short breaths. If, however, the turtle is actively foraging, (deep dives followed by several minutes at the surface)then there’s more of a chance of her being at the surface long enough for the PTT to transmit. Several dives like this with a transmission and we get a good location class (LC) “hit.” Still, the PTT is probably only sending a few to a dozen or so bursts per day.

Now imagine that she comes out to nest. From the time she’s in the surf to the time she re-enters the water, the PTT is sending bursts at least once per minute. Over a couple of hours the PTT will transmit 100-200 times and that will cook the battery pretty quickly. Think of each nesting event as taking 1-2 months of transmitter life off a PTT as compared to a non-nesting turtle.

There were two very weak transmissions on the night of 6/12 and early morning of 6/13 that suggest that in either of the scenarios above, she was out again and nesting long enough for
the two weak signals to get through when a satellite was directly overhead. But they’re low LCs so they’re not reliable enough to plot.

So on the bright side, and as appears from her tracking, Bevelyn has nested this season, probably multiple times, in Florida! We can be happy about that for sure!

Because we can no longer track her, Bevelyn has been removed from adoption eligibility. Thank you to all who adopted and supported her! Your donation enabled us to get a glimpse into her life after her release from her remarkable recovery at the GSTC! We have 3 other turtles still eligible for adoption(Option#1-Griffin; Option#2-Vida or Spitfire)…please check out our website for more information on these turtles! And now you can even purchase these adoptions on our online store!

Sincerely,
Stefanie Ouellette
Education and Field Coordinator

It’s been a busy season so far on Jekyll Island’s sea turte nesting beach! Currently we have:

We are just heading into peak season so we’re expecting to stay busy for another 4-5 weeks at least! Once we have an opportunity to process the data a bit further, we’ll be able to see how many of these girls are new to our beach (never been tagged before), how many are returning nesters (already have at least 1 tag), and how many nests each one has laid so far on Jekyll! So exciting!!!

Also, our nightly (and VERY popular) Turtle Walks are going FAB-U-LOUSLY!! As of June 18, we had conducted 32 walks so far, and on 11 of those, a turtle has been seen!! AMAZING! So if you haven’t been on a walk this year, now is the time to do so!

For more information about our Turtle Walks, please visit our website. You can make reservations by calling the Center at 912-635-4444. We still do not have dates available for Hatchling Walks. However, we will post them on our website and BLOG once we do!

Please remember that artificial lights are harmful to sea turtles-especially white lights- to both nesting mothers and hatchlings! They can deter the mothers from coming out of the water to nest, cause them to false crawl (crawl out of the water on to the beach but not lay any eggs), and disorient them (causing them to waste precious energy roaming the beach confused!). Hatchlings are also easily confused and distracted by lights leaving them exhausted, dehydrated and vulnerable to predators. Leave your flashlights and cameras at home, keep your distance (minimum of 25 feet), stay still and quiet and maybe you’ll get an experience of a lifetime!

Sincerely,
Stefanie Ouellette
Education and Field Coordinator