About

The Goals of the St. Catherines Sea Turtle Program are to:

For the past 23 years, the Program’s mission has been to enhance production of loggerhead hatchlings to build a sustainable population of sea turtles in the Southeast. This has been accomplished by following the procedures outlined in NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services’ “Recovery Plan for the Northwest Atlantic Population of the Loggerhead Sea Turtle” (second revision). The Recovery Plan identifies three objectives that the Georgia Southern University Sea Turtle Program at SCI fulfills every season:

1. Manage sufficient nesting beach habitat to ensure successful nesting.
2. Implement scientifically-based nest management plans.
3. Minimize nest predation.

Over the past 23 years, the Georgia Southern University Sea Turtle Program at SCI has put over 170,000 hatchlings into the sea from over 3000 nests.

Other Goals:

•  Understand nesting ecology of loggerhead sea turtles on the Georgia Coast.
•  Transfer knowledge of modern sea turtle nests into ancient ecosystems by documenting sea turtle nests.
• Study the effects of climate change and sea level rise on endangered species nesting habitat in order to develop a sustainable long-term beach conservation management plan.
•  Build a Sea Turtle Learning Community to support conservation of Georgia’s sea turtles.

A loggerhead hatchling scampers across a heavy mineral sand deposit on a St. Catherines Island backbeach heading for its life in the sea. This turtle will live the rest of its life in the sea, except possibly returning in about 30 years to nest on St. Catherines or nearby Georgia barrier islands.

 More About The Sea Turtles We are Saving: 

Seven species of sea turtles currently inhabit the World’s oceans; all are threatened or endangered; four are found in the coastal waters of the Georgia Bight:

Sea turtles exhibit adaptation to a totally marine existence, except for depositing their eggs on land. Legs are modified to flippers, heads and necks are no longer retractable, and salt glands allow excretion of salt from their systems. Of the four Georgia species, only loggerheads commonly nest on sandy shores of Georgia’s barrier islands. Sea turtles evolved approximately 150 to 110 million years ago (Kear and Lee, 2006) during the latest Jurassic or early Cretaceous Period. During this time many species have been found in the seas at any given time. As time passed, many species of sea turtles evolved and adapted to the changing environment, and some species have become extinct. Confronted with the exploding population of humans and their ever increasing pollution, sea turtles have become threatened and endangered; not a new phenomenon for individual species throughout geologic time, but unique due to involvement of all sea turtles and due to their interactions with humans.

The history of the Georgia Southern University Sea Turtle Program at St. Catherines Island  is reviewed here within the context of the history of St. Catherines Island.

Gale A. Bishop began doing research on St. Catherines after a short reconnaissance visit in the company of Georgia Southern University colleague JoAnne Shadroui in 1986 to assess the potential for her to initiate research on the Island. The remarkable natural laboratory provided by the undeveloped island, the robust turn-key infrastructure provided by The St. Catherines Island Foundation, Inc., and the St. Catherines Island Research Grants Program administered through the American Museum of Natural History on behalf of the Edward John Noble Foundation proved to be an irresistible opportunity for Shadroui, who initiated a study McQueens Dune Field, and for Bishop, who initiated a study of modern Ghost Shrimp.

Studies of populations of Carolinean Ghost Shrimp on St. Catherines’ beaches were followed by documentation of the distribution and accumulation of deposits of heavy mineral suites on St. Catherines’ beaches (Bishop, 1990) and studies of the taphonomy of decapod crustaceans washed onto the beach. In 1990, while sampling Carolinean Ghost Shrimp populations with a Yabby Pump to study their life cycle and claw morphology, Bishop was assisted by biologist and science educator, Nancy Brannen Marsh. Upon watching GaDNR Sea Turtle Intern Tyronne Ragan “work” a nest on seaside Spit, Marsh suggested that this process would be a wonderful way to teach science content, scientific processing, and critical thinking to K-12 teachers in Georgia. Because of Bishop’s history of teacher education through support of the Georgia Plan for Mathematics and Science Education (Title II), Bishop and Marsh discussed the possibility of developing an externally funded program based upon conservation of sea turtle conservation. This concept was then discussed with Island Superintendent Royce Hayes who recognized its potential to support the newly mandated GaDNR Index Beach Program to conserve sea turtles on all Georgia barrier islands. In 1991 two interns, Ming Lee and Susan, womaned the fledgling program through the nesting season.

A proposal was written to the Georgia Plan for Mathematics and Science Education for support of a new St. Catherines Island Sea Turtle Conservation Program co-directed by Bishop and Marsh. The initial proposal was funded in 1991 by the newly named Georgia Eisenhower Higher Education Program and has been continually funded since then by Eisenhower and its new designation, the Georgia Teacher Quality Higher Education program. The initial grant supported 7 pairs of teacher-interns on St. Catherines Island housed for two-week intervals in the Turtle House. This plan was soon modified to teach one two-week class with 14 participants as a group. Student input indicated that two weeks was too long, considering their normal family obligations, so the residency was reduced to 7-8 days with two per-residency training meetings and a post-residency meeting. During the summers of 2002-2005 the Turtle House was assigned to the Wildlife Survival Center for housing their interns, so the Turtle Program worked out of Cabin 7.

Upon Bishop’s retirement in 1999, Fred Rich was formally brought into the Program as the Principal Investigator required under Teacher Quality guidelines. Bishop became Director of the Museum of Geology in 2001 and brought graduate and undergraduate students into the program to act as interns and use the experience for their graduate study. Parts of two masters theses resulted from this effort.

Staffing of the Program 2001-2006

• 2001 Gale Bishop – South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
• 2002 Tim Pranger – South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
• 2003 Mike Knell – South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
• 2004 Mike Knell-03/Maggie 2003 – South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
• 2005 Clint Collins – University of Georgia; Sociology Sophomore
• 2006 Bishop w Hollis Stewart – University of Georgia; College of Veterinary Sciences

Theses

• Mike Knell
• Maggie Hart

When Fred Rich assumed duties as Director of the East-Central Georgia PRISM Center (and grant) in 2005, Kelly Vance assumed duties as Principal Investigator and became an integral part of the Program. Nancy Marsh, co-founder of the program, formally retired from it due to health problems in 2005. Lynne Burkhalter was recruited as Senior Mentor (2005) and Michelle Griffin and Hollis Stewart were recruited as mentors in 2006.

The St. Catherines Sea Turtle Conservation Program developed a concept for a portable sea turtle exhibit about 1994 and funded by a grant from The Georgia Plan for Mathematics and Science Education. The exhibit was intended for use in school classrooms and media centers in Georgia. The exhibit was designed by Gale Bishop and executed by Wilderness Graphics (Tallahassee FL) as a folding, box-like format, with folded dimensions of 5 feet x 3 feet x 3 feet, unfolding to ten feet of length and six feet of height at its center. The exhibit, designed for portability, weighed under 200 pounds and could be moved by two to four people, but presented significant problems due to its bulk and weight. Two iterations of the exhibit were produced, one was housed as a temporary exhibit at the Georgia Southern College Museum (Statesboro, GA) and the other was used as the traveling exhibit from 1995 to 2003 visiting many classrooms around the State of Georgia. The traveling exhibit found a temporary home at the Jekyll Island Marine Education Center for several years, then was returned to St. Catherines Island for use in the Sea Turtle program until 2006 when components were disassembled for integration into exhibits at the Fernbank Museum in Atlanta, GA. Components posted on text boards in the exhibit were preserved, revised, and are posted on The St. Catherines Sea Turtle Conservation web site as a down loadable bulletin board “poster.’

The St. Catherines Sea Turtle Exhibit unfolded and on display.

Components of the Classroom Sea Turtle Exhibit

The Exhibit Shell containing:

•  A plastic cast of a juvenile loggerhead sea turtle,
•   Photographs of sea turtle conservation, and
•  Explanatory graphs, charts, and text fields.
•  Videotapes
•  Scripted Slide Show
•  Books and Pamphlets describing sea turtles
•  An Atlantic Shell collection
•  Sand Samples from the beach and a sieve set
•  A Set of Activities.

The sea turtle exhibit was loaned for classroom use for up to two weeks on a priority basis in the following order; former sea turtle interns, administrative or promotional uses, then other science classes.

Transportation of the exhibit and its insurance against damage or destruction were the responsibility of the borrowers. The cost of refurbishing lost or damaged contents were the responsibility of the borrower. Refurbishing was done by sea turtle Director, Gale Bishop, after its return before it was loaned again.

–Brooke Lord, Co-Director, Laboratory and Research Coordinator
–Kelly Vance, Ph.D., Educational Director, Professor of Geology

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