Nomination Statement for the Sea Turtle Conservancy, Recipient of the Florida Chapter of The Wildlife Society’s 2020 NGO Special Recognition Award

The Sea Turtle Conservancy is the oldest and most accomplished sea turtle organization in the world! STC is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) membership organization based in Gainesville, Florida. Mr. Joshua B. Powers founded STC in in 1959 as the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC) in response to renowned ecologist Dr. Archie Carr’s award-winning book, The Windward Road (1956), which first alerted the world to the plight of sea turtles. Dr. Carr served as Scientific Director of STC from its beginning until his death in 1987. Since our founding, STC’s research and conservation initiatives have been instrumental in saving the Caribbean green turtle from immediate extinction, as well as raising awareness and protection for sea turtles across the globe with 60 years of experience in national and international sea turtle conservation, research, and educational endeavors. The organization began its work in Costa Rica, expanded its research and conservation efforts throughout Central America and the Wider Caribbean, and does a great deal of work in Florida. Below are specific details about the latter:

Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge

STC has been an active supporter and advocate for the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge since the idea was first conceived decades ago. The organization played a significant role in establishing the refuge in 1989, and STC was a founding member of the Archie Carr Working Group, a coalition of public and private entities set up to expand, protect, manage and promote the Refuge. STC continues to help secure funds for land acquisition and management, and directly coordinates a number of habitat improvement programs in the Carr Refuge, including dune restoration projects, beach clean ups and a program that helps beachfront residents convert their lights to the latest turtle-friendly technology. STC’s annual migration tracking studies of turtles in the refuge are yielding important information about what these turtles do when they leave the Refuge, which helps direct conservation and recovery efforts.

Over the years, STC has worked with Florida lawmakers and county governments to restrict coastal armoring in the area, and leads ongoing efforts to increase awareness and public support for the Carr Refuge by distributing educational materials, generating media attention, staging public events, conducting guided sea turtle walks and giving presentations to local groups and schools. STC’s educational efforts related to the Carr Refuge expanded further in 2008 with the opening of the Barrier Island Center (BIC), an environmental education center located in the heart of the Carr Refuge that is jointly managed by STC and Brevard County’s Environmentally Endangered Lands Program. With staff and volunteers based year-round at the BIC, STC conducts a variety of programs in partnership with the local community that are building coastal awareness and stewardship for the Carr Refuge and the entire barrier island ecosystem. Without question, STC’s long-term commitment to the Archie Carr Refuge and all the turtle nesting sites in Florida has contributed to the recovery of green turtles seen now. STC has celebrated the good news about green turtles with numerous public and private partners that have also contributed in their own ways—and with STC’s loyal members who have supported efforts so strongly.

Barrier Island Education Center

The Barrier Island Sanctuary Management and Education Center (Barrier Island Center) is an educational center located in the heart of the Archie Carr Refuge, a major nesting site for sea turtles. Through a partnership with the Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands Program (EELS), the Sea Turtle Conservancy manages and conducts the educational programs offered at the Barrier Island Center.

STC leads efforts to increase awareness and support for the Carr Refuge by distributing educational materials, generating media attention about the Refuge, conducting guided sea turtle walks, and giving presentations to local groups and schools. While these efforts have been effective, STC’s ability to sustain broad outreach programs in the Carr Refuge has been limited without a permanent educational facility located within the Refuge itself. The new Barrier Island Center greatly improves outreach capabilities in the area.

As the Carr Refuge has demonstrated, people can live and play on important sea turtle nesting beaches without significantly affecting nesting success. But it requires a well-informed public that is committed to behaving in a manner that doesn’t harm nesting turtles or their nests. As the human population on Brevard County’s coast continues to grow, STC and the Barrier Island Center will play an increasingly important role in protecting the fragile barrier island and its globally important sea turtle nesting beaches.

Tracking Loggerheads from the Archie Carr Refuge

In 2008, the Sea Turtle Conservancy and the University of Central Florida (UCF) began an inaugural sea turtle research and conservation project to study the migration patterns of threatened loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) nesting in and near the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge on the central east coast of Florida. The study will reveal important information about the turtle’s migratory behavior, including migratory routes, foraging grounds, and the areas of potential conflict with commercial fisheries or legal harvest of sea turtles. This critical information will enhance the ability of resource managers and conservationists in their efforts to protect loggerheads, both in U.S. waters and through international conservation efforts.

The satellite transmitter attached to each loggerhead sends signals to orbiting satellites each time the turtles surface to breath. The data will be collected and downloaded to STC & UCF researchers. In 2010, UCF, through funding from the Sea Turtle Grants Program, attached GPS satellite transmitters to nesting females loggerheads as part of an investigate of reproductive parameters, movements and feeding habits of nesting loggerheads. The information gained from this study will improve estimates of adult nesting population size, identify movement patterns and expand the knowledge on feeding ecology.

Educational migration maps will show the best location points of the turtle’s movements and locations. This will allow interested persons all over the world to watch along as researchers discover where the sea turtles travel after nesting. Through STC’s online educational program, the public is invited to watch along on the Internet to learn more about these amazing animals.

Research: Florida In-Water

In 2018, Sea Turtle Conservancy began an in-water project to study the sea turtles of the Big Bend region of Florida. Historical, anecdotal and published accounts suggest the Big Bend region is an important developmental foraging ground for sea turtles. The region has a relatively low amount of coastal development and, remarkably, it contains the second largest seagrass estuary in the eastern Gulf of Mexico (about 3,000 km2). Sea turtle researchers have never studied large parts of this coastline. Estimating sea turtle population structure on foraging grounds is critical to measuring long-term trends, understanding the use of benthic habitats and managing protected areas. The Florida Panhandle and Big Bend regions contain important developmental habitats for many marine species, yet they generally receive less research attention than other areas of Florida.

This research is a collaborative project between STC, USGS Florida Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, UF Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, and the Nature Coast Biological Station in Cedar Key. Both STC staff and UF students are working and volunteering on this project. A key tool to this important work is a new “state the art” research vessel named the ‘R/V Lavinia.” The vessel was donated to STC from Carolina Skiff Boats and STC paid for the new engine and custom tower with funding from generous donors, Naked Turtle Rum and World Nomads.

The immediate goals of this project include describing the distribution of juvenile green turtles along this coastline, modeling the environmental factors that characterize high abundance sites, measuring green turtle diet and genetic structure, and determine their interseasonal and group movement patterns. Initial vessel surveys of the Big Bend in the fall of 2018 have covered 370 km and counted 108 sea turtles, including 83 green turtles, 13 Kemp’s ridleys, 11 loggerheads and one unknown species.

The Northwest Atlantic green turtle (Chelonia mydas) population is listed as threatened in the United States and federal wildlife managers have stressed the need for in-water abundance estimates and more information on the poorly understood juvenile neritic stage. Green turtles forage, nest and migrate in subtropical and tropical seas throughout the world. They have been depleted historically even though the species retains much of its former range. For many foraging areas, we lack basic information on the quality of the habitat, their seasonal movements and their foraging behavior. Effective management also requires quantifying the direct and indirect threats to this life stage, which include recreational fishing, boat strikes, disease and hypothermia. Although gathering this data can be difficult, recent tools such as small vessels with sighting towers and small Unmanned Aerial Systems offer an opportunity to survey for turtles over relatively large areas and capture them opportunistically.

In recent years, there has been an interest in modeling habitat factors that affect abundance. One important reason for this is to understand how species abundance changes due to habitat fragmentation and habitat loss either caused by humans or natural processes. Another is to simply understand the importance of certain habitats over others. Quantifying these relationships can lead to a greater understanding of habitat requirements, which is a task that is particularly important in the management and recovery of threatened and endangered species.

STC’s Florida in-water research project will identify previous unknown areas of sea turtle abundance in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, which will give wildlife managers the ability to make informed conservation decisions and provide a baseline for future work. Vessel and sUAS surveys will be repeatable and allow comparisons across years and seasons. The identification of specific areas with higher abundance will help federal wildlife managers piece together a framework of critical habitat for use in future recovery plans for loggerhead, green, and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles.

Tour de Turtles: A Sea Turtle Migration Marathon

Started in 2008, the Tour de Turtles (TdT) http://tourdeturtles.org/ is a fun, educational journey through the science, research and geography of sea turtle migration using satellite telemetry. Created by Sea Turtle Conservancy, with help from sponsors and partners, this event follows the marathon migration of sea turtles, representing different species, from their nesting beaches to their foraging grounds.

Each year, sea turtles will be tracked for approximately three months as they leave their respective nesting beaches and race to complete a turtle marathon. The Tour de Turtles competitors will swim with the goal of being the first turtle to swim the furthest distance during the migration marathon. Anyone can become involved by supporting a turtle to help raise awareness about their cause. While we may not know the outcome of the race, one thing is certain: saving sea turtles is a marathon, not a sprint!

Beachfront Lighting: Project Overview

Sea turtles have crawled onto beaches to nest for millions of years. It was once easy for hatchlings to find the ocean after emerging from nests because the brightest horizon was always the ocean, compared to the dark dune. Now, Florida’s coasts are lined with beachfront properties that can emit powerful, white light, which can cause sea turtles to crawl toward those lights (mi-orient) or crawl in circles on the beach (disorient). Based on consensus from a panel of sea turtle experts, around 100,000 sea turtle hatchlings are disoriented each year in Florida. They can end up in pools, decks, or even the road.

With grant funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Sea Turtle Conservancy is working to eliminate problem beachfront lighting and sea turtle disorientations in Southwest Florida. For Phase III of this project, STC is retrofitting beachfront properties in Pinellas, Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties. Since 2010, STC has retrofitted lights on more than 200 beachfront properties, darkened more than 20 miles of beach and retrofitted thousands of bulbs and fixtures.

To quantify the brightness of a beach, STC staff takes light meter readings, measured in foot-candles, before and after the lighting retrofit. At all properties retrofitted during Phase I of the NFWF grant, the amount of foot candles was reduced by 86 percent at 25 feet away from the building and 74 percent at the toe of the dune. The graph below illustrates how the amount of foot-candles visible from the beach is decreased at large condominiums

Florida Sea Turtle Specialty License Plate and Sea Turtle Grants Program

In 1995, the Sea Turtle Conservancy (then the Caribbean Conservation Corporation), initiated a statewide effort to establish a Florida Sea Turtle Specialty License Plate to provide a permanent funding source for the state's Marine Turtle Protection Program. Thanks to the efforts of STC and other Florida sea turtle groups, in 1997, the Florida Legislature (Statute 320.08058 (19)) authorized the creation of a Sea Turtle Specialty License Plate to promote the conservation and protection of Florida's sea turtles.

Funded by a portion of revenues from this license plate, the Sea Turtle Grants Program has distributed more than $4.2 million over twelve years in support of over 300 sea turtle research, conservation and education projects throughout Florida. All of the funding generated by the tag is required by law to support sea turtle protection in Florida. Seventy-percent of the funding goes to the Marine Turtle Protection Program to support research and management activities related to sea turtles. The remaining 30% of revenue is distributed to STC, which then redistributes the funding through a competitive grants program supporting turtle projects that benefit Florida sea turtles.

Each year the Sea Turtle Grants Committee randomly selects up to ten (10) organizations or institutions conducting ongoing Florida Marine Turtle Permit-related Nesting Beach Surveys, Stranding and Salvage, or Rehabilitation Activities to be awarded a non-competitive Mini-Grant of $1,000 in support of these activities.

Numerous groups and institutions around the state are working to protect the threatened and endangered sea turtle species found nesting on Florida beaches and swimming in Florida's coastal waters. Through the grants program, coastal governments, Florida non-profit organizations, education and research institutions are eligible to receive funding to support their activities. An independent committee of experts review grants and select the best ones for funding each year.

(The bulk of the information in this nomination was obtained from www.conserveturtles.org)

In summary, for about half of its six-decade operation, via a handful of initiatives detailed above, the Sea Turtle Conservancy has improved the status and future for one of Florida’s iconic wildlife groups: sea turtles. Please recognize their commitment and success by honoring them at your spring meeting, to be held not far from their headquarters in Gainesville.