GEORGIA SEA TURTLE CENTER 2016 was an outstanding year for the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. Center founder and director, Dr. Terry Norton, received the prestigious American Association of Zoo Veterinarians Emil Dolensek Award for his work at the GSTC and throughout the world. This award is not given annually, rather only when a deserving candidate is presented. Dr. Norton was also profiled on Georgia Public Broadcasting in their “Island Vet” program. The show aired on stations throughout the state and online. This year, the Center treated 81 sea turtle patients, with the most common problems being trauma, cold stunning, fish hook ingestion, starvation, and flotation abnormalities. We continue to lead advanced research efforts to better understand nutrition, wound care, and pain management in sea turtles and other reptiles.
GEORGIA SEA TURTLE CENTER
In 2016, the GSTC welcomed more than 100,000 visitors to the Center, while our education team engaged kids through field trips, outreach programs, distance learning, and summer camps. The distance learning program now reaches more than 4,000 people in 50+ schools throughout 20 states and three foreign countries. And, for the first time ever, Sea Turtle Camp went international. In 2016 GSTC educators taught camps in Costa Rica and St. Kitts.
18
Our research team continues to manage the nesting female loggerhead sea turtle program on Jekyll Island. This year they documented 170 nests on Jekyll, with a hatching success of more than 66%. When our patrol team wasn’t busy working with a sea turtle, they were busy educating people on the beach, reaching more than 3,800 guests just in the 2016 season.
The Center’s work in Costa Rica, funded through Disney’s Conservation Fund, continued this year, helping with their education, research, and conservation programs. Our main focus continues to be capacity building through training and education. The diamondback terrapin causeway conservation program is in its ninth year, working to reduce road mortality and to better understand these turtles. This year, we encountered 494 terrapins on the road, and rehabilitated 13. A total of 321 terrapin eggs were incubated, and 150 of those hatchlings have been released back into the wild. In 2016, we employed 26 AmeriCorps members in sea turtle and coastal wildlife conservation service. These members are a vital component of the Center’s staff and help us increase environmental awareness and support of conservation initiatives in the community and on Jekyll Island. The Marine Debris Program also had an exceptional year, removing more than 57,000 items from coastal Georgia and logging more than 1,000 hours of volunteer service.