Turtle nest monitor Lynn Korp’s gear includes a bucket for trash or to transport rescued hatchlings. Her stickers give it a personal touch. Tim Stepien /The Coastal Star
By Rich Pollack
The green sea turtle hatchlings seemed doomed even before they had a chance to meet the world.
Nestled inside a chamber their mom had excavated weeks before, the tiny turtles were ready to bolt from the nest on Highland Beach’s shore, but weren’t quite strong enough to bulldoze their way through sand that had been packed down by water and weather.
Fortunately for them, Lynn Korp — and a family that had come to watch the volunteer marine turtle monitor do her work — were close by.
Recognizing that the nest was “corked,” Korp began digging and soon 122 weary but determined hatchlings came scampering toward the ocean and for the lucky ones, a lifetime of adventure that could last for up to 70 years or more.
“That was a very productive nest,” says Korp, 69, an admitted serial volunteer who has been lending a hand to other people — and to critters — since she was 8 years old.
Most nests, she says, average about 80 or so hatchlings and the babies are largely able to make their escape on their own. When they can’t, the results are horrific.
Korp knows that if it were not for her efforts — and those of a couple of dozen or so other volunteers in Highland Beach who work under a permit from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — turtles trapped in nesting chambers would die.
“It’s pure joy knowing that I am able to help these little turtles survive,” she says.
But Korp says the rescue efforts cut both ways.
“I always say, ‘who saved who?’ because the turtles saved me,” she says.
Korp, who is in her 11th year of making early morning treks to the shore twice a week from March through October, chronicling nests and hatches, says she found comfort on the beach while dealing with a stressful family illness.
“It was something I had to look forward to,” she says. “I was finding peace.”
That same feeling, she says, keeps her coming back.
“I expect to be out there in 20 years — with my cane,” Korp says. “It still gives me peace and something to look forward to. There are just so many pluses.”
One of the benefits, she says, is the chance to greet a female hatchling that could return in about two decades to make her first nest.
“I always say, ‘Good morning and welcome to Highland Beach,’ I’ll see you when I’m 90.”
A Delray Beach resident and artist who runs a business restoring ceramics, sentimental items and even museum pieces, Korp was volunteering for a program that promotes pedestrian and bicycle safety when one of the other volunteers discovered that she often walked the beach early in the morning collecting sea glass and picking up trash.
A marine turtle monitor himself, he invited Korp to join him and his wife and learn the ropes. Pretty soon she was hooked.
That couple, Charlie and Pat Bonfield, were just two of the people whom Korp credits with making volunteer work contagious. “Everything I do, I was inspired by someone else,” she says.
Korp learned the importance of volunteer work at an early age, putting on plays and magic shows when she was still in grade school and donating money earned to the local paramedic squad.
Later, she volunteered as a Girl Scout on Saturday mornings, helping a person with a physical disability.
These days, you might find her volunteering at city festivals and events, such as the Delray Affair, just pitching in where needed. She’s also a strong supporter of the newly formed
Highland Beach Sea Turtle Team, a nonprofit that raises money to purchase supplies for the volunteers.
That organization recently received $2,500 from the Town Commission as well as a matching gift from a town resident.
Korp also puts her artistic talent to work for good in the community, making sea glass jewelry for an organization fighting breast cancer and serving as a volunteer artist for Art in the Alley, a program coordinated by residents of Delray’s Osceola Park neighborhood.
“It’s a good feeling when you know you’re doing something for someone else — or something else,” she says.
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