release - News - The Coastal Star
2024-03-29T14:15:02Z
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Boca Raton: Meet Team Turtle
https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/boca-raton-meet-team-turtle
2019-12-31T23:30:00.000Z
2019-12-31T23:30:00.000Z
The Coastal Star
https://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:18pt;">Inside the work of Gumbo Limbo crew</span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:18pt;">that strives to be</span> <span style="font-size:18pt;">biggest ally of these at-risk sea creatures</span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960928483,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960928483,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960928483?profile=original" /></a><em>ABOVE: Gumbo Limbo workers roll a 350-pound female green turtle named Yamato to the ocean at Spanish River Park before a crowd typical of such turtle releases. Yamato, who was treated for partial paralysis after being hit by a boat, wears a satellite-tracking device and is strapped into a custom-built gurney. BELOW: Veterinarian Maria Chadam raises her arms as sea turtle rehab coordinator Whitney Crowder hugs Gumbo Limbo manager Leanne Welch to celebrate the release of Yamato. <strong>Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960929075,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960929075,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="450" alt="7960929075?profile=original" /></a></strong></p>
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<p><strong>By Larry Keller</strong></p>
<p>It’s a typical Sunday afternoon at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, and visitors cluster around the aquarium, stroll the boardwalk and explore the butterfly garden. <br /> It’s the injured and ailing sea turtles in outdoor tanks, however, that inspire the most fervent reactions.<br /> A little boy stands at one, gawking at a turtle named Cane swimming languidly. “That’s so ginormous!” he exclaims.<br /> It’s doubtful many of the 200,000 annual visitors are aware of the array of scientists, educators, interns and 150 volunteers who work together to protect and heal turtles, and inform the public about them, or the specifics of what they do.<br /> “They are the go-to place for the south end of Palm Beach County and south of that. These are very important nesting beaches,” says Larry Wood, a biologist affiliated with the National Save the Sea Turtle Foundation.<br /> Here are a few members of Gumbo Limbo’s sea turtle team:</p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Sea Turtle Conservation</span> <br /> <span style="font-size:14pt;">& Research Program</span><br /> “I absolutely love what I do,” says David Anderson, sea turtle conservation coordinator. “Being on the beach every morning at sunrise — that’s my office. You encounter something different every day.”<br /> Plus, people thank him for what he’s doing, tell him how lucky he is to be doing it and snap photos of him at work.<br /> “It must be a pretty cool job,” Anderson says with a laugh. “I feel very fortunate.”<br /> Anderson and his team count and record data during sea turtle nesting season, and a whole lot more. He and marine conservationist Kirt Rusenko are the only full-time staffers in this unit of Gumbo Limbo. <br /> Anderson has a bachelor’s degree in history from Auburn University and a master’s in physical geography from the University of Alabama.<br /> Rusenko has a doctorate in zoology from Clemson University and has been Boca Raton’s marine conservationist since 1995. He was recognized by the International Dark-Sky Association in 2013 for his work in protecting sea turtles.<br /> Five part-time staffers assist them during nesting season, March 1 through Oct. 31. They have degrees or are pursuing degrees in marine sciences, and each has spent two or three years with the team.<br /> Anderson was a middle school and high school science teacher, and an adjunct professor at Broward College, when he began volunteering at Gumbo Limbo in 2006, then worked part-time there in summers. <br /> “All teachers need a second job,” he quips.<br /> When the job Anderson now holds became vacant in 2015, he applied and got it.<br /> During nesting season, Anderson’s team meets at Gumbo Limbo about 30 minutes before sunrise. Then, equipped with tablet computers, water bottles and rain jackets, they head to the 5-mile section of beach that they survey.<br /> Once there, they record information on the types of species that came ashore in darkness — they can tell by the pattern of their tracks — as well as geographic data, whether they found nests, the condition of them and other information. <br /> Then they return to Gumbo Limbo to input the 1,300 data points. <br /> “It’s very data-intensive work,” Anderson says.<br /> He also supervises guided nighttime viewings of wayward hatchlings being released in the ocean, and group outings to search for adult females laying eggs. He estimates a 70% success rate at this — while being vigilant that nobody disturbs the turtles with lights from cameras, cellphones and the like. <br /> In the off-season, Anderson remains busy fine-tuning data for submission to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, attending workshops and conferences and making presentations to civic groups.<br /> One highlight of his job occurred when a high school girl from North Dakota, who wanted to be a turtle biologist for a day, visited courtesy of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.<br /> It wasn’t a banner year for green turtle nests, so when Anderson took her to the beach, they got a surprise. “One of the biggest green sea turtles I’ve seen was finishing her nest on the beach,” he recalls. “It was like it was purposely for her.”</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960928701,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960928701,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="550" alt="7960928701?profile=original" /></a><em>Jeanette Wyneken, a professor of biological sciences who oversees the Florida Atlantic University Research Gallery at Gumbo Limbo, holds a pair of female 4-month-old green sea turtles that were part of her sex/temperature research.</em></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14pt;">Florida Atlantic University <br /> Research Gallery</span><br /> In one corner of Gumbo Limbo’s complex is an FAU research laboratory. Visitors can look down from the second floor upon tubs of turtles, and usually a professor or a student is on hand to answer questions about the work underway.<br /> “Our lab is in many ways unique in the world,” says Jeanette Wyneken, an FAU professor of biological sciences and researcher who oversees the facility. “We’re not only doing the science, but we talk about it in real time.” <br /> FAU researchers once had to lug jugs of saltwater from the ocean to the lab for their work. “It limits what you can do,” Wyneken says. Nowadays, ocean water is pumped directly there via underground pipes and into a storage tank.<br /> Wyneken’s doctorate in biology is from the University of Illinois, far from any oceans. But she had small pet turtles as a child (after her mother explained that a pet dinosaur wasn’t an option) and eventually a box turtle that she kept for more than 50 years. It was more than 100 years old when it died, she says.<br /> Her research at the Gumbo Limbo lab includes an ongoing years-long study into how temperatures affect the gender ratios of sea turtles. Gender isn’t established until after eggs are laid. She has found that the warmer the climate, the more likely hatchlings will be females. In seven of the past 10 years, loggerhead hatchlings have all been females, she says.<br /> “If we have too much of one sex and not the other, we have a problem because we’re dealing with endangered or threatened species,” Wyneken says. A gender imbalance greatly affects reproduction and the survival of those species.<br /> “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be documenting the effects of climate change,” Wyneken says. “The turtles tell the story clearly and non-threateningly.”<br /> Hotter temperatures not only affect the hatchlings’ gender, but their very survival. Some 79% to 82% of loggerhead sea turtle eggs on the Boca Raton beach used to hatch, but that was down to 58%, and then 38%, in the particularly hot years of 2015 and 2016 respectively, Wyneken says.<br /> “This is serious. They can’t dig themselves away from the hot temperatures, so they die.” <br /> Green turtle successful hatch rates are on a similar track, Wyneken adds. (Leatherbacks nest in far smaller numbers in Florida and are harder to study for various reasons.)<br /> The 2017 and 2018 nesting seasons rebounded somewhat, and 64% and 70% of clutches successfully hatched respectively, still lower than what used to be typical.<br /> Other turtle research at the lab has long been conducted by Wyneken’s fellow professor Michael Salmon. He has shown, for example, that sea turtles can see color, and perceive some colors more clearly than others. One of Salmon’s clever students devised a turtle maze and reward system for the study.<br /> “We now know another piece about the biology of these animals,” Wyneken says. <br /> And the information has potential practical uses. Long-line fishing operators bait thousands of hooks on gear that contains lights. Using a lighting color that doesn’t attract turtles to the baits could help save them from being inadvertently killed.<br /> Gumbo Limbo lab research isn’t exclusively devoted to sea turtles. Professor Stephen Kajiura and his students have been studying sharks, including their senses of smell and sight. And Professor Marguerite Koch is studying the effects of ocean acidification — caused by absorption of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — on seagrasses.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960929471,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960929471,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="550" alt="7960929471?profile=original" /></a><em>Rehabilitation coordinator Caitlin Bovery photographs an albino sea turtle hatchling during a release at sea.</em></p>
<p><br /> <span style="font-size:14pt;">Sea Turtle</span> <br /> <span style="font-size:14pt;">Rehabilitation Facility</span><br /> The rehabilitation team could very well be renamed the creative team. Its members have made a brace from zip ties and epoxy. Learned to apply honey as a topical antibiotic. Used medicinal leeches to reduce swelling from fishing-line entanglements. Applied medicinal maggots to remove dead tissue from infections.<br /> “You definitely get creative,” says Caitlin Bovery, an assistant sea turtle rehabilitation coordinator.<br /> Perhaps never more so than last summer when two adult, eggs-carrying females were admitted to the rehab center with serious boat strike injuries. <br /> The hospital team created a quiet environment in tanks for them and, several times, administered a labor-inducing drug. The tanks were drained and the turtles were elevated on a large tire so their eggs could drop with gravity. It worked, but when staff buried the eggs on the beach to incubate, no hatchlings emerged. Still, both mothers recovered from their injuries sufficiently to be released and perhaps nest again.<br /> Not only turtles have received medical care. A porcupine fish in the nature center’s aquarium was sedated and kept damp with seawater-soaked towels while staff veterinarian Maria Chadam surgically removed a fishhook from its small intestine. The fish made a quick recovery.<br /> Bovery is one of three full-time staffers in the rehab unit. She has a master’s degree from FAU in environmental studies. Before joining the rehab team, she was a volunteer. <br /> “I fell in love with sea turtles when I was a little kid,” Bovery says. “I loved the idea of these magnificent creatures that have been around since the dinosaurs. They’re so charismatic.”<br /> Emily Mirowski has the same title as Bovery. She was quoted in media globally in October after she removed 104 pieces of plastic that had been ingested by a sick baby turtle that died after being taken to Gumbo Limbo. <br /> Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Coordinator Whitney Crowder has worked in sea turtle biology since 2002, including managing the Turtle Hospital in Marathon Key for two years. She was invited by Greenpeace to speak with ocean activists including Jane Fonda and Ted Danson at a rally in October at the U.S. Capitol. <br /> Chadam, the veterinarian, is on site two days a week. Turtles whose injuries prevent them from ever being released are usually given to other facilities, such as aquariums. Two are permanent residents at Gumbo Limbo.<br /> The turtle hospital was designed for 30 patients a year but treats from 50 to 100, Bovery says. Helping them all is a challenge.<br /> “We find the space,” she says. “We make the time.”</p></div>
Gumbo Limbo sea turtle release: Spanish River Park, Boca Raton — Jan. 23
https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/gumbo-limbo-sea-turtle-release-spanish-river-park-boca-raton-jan-
2018-01-31T16:00:00.000Z
2018-01-31T16:00:00.000Z
Mary Kate Leming
https://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960773468,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960773468,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="600" class="align-center" alt="7960773468?profile=original" /></a><em>Kraken, an adult loggerhead turtle with only one eye, returned to the sea after six months of recuperation. She was rescued last June after being hit by a boat propeller and needed emergency surgery. <strong>ABOVE</strong><b>:</b> A crowd wishes Kraken bon voyage. <b>BELOW:</b> Gumbo Limbo Nature Center staffers carry her to the surf. The turtle wears a satellite transmitter so she can be tracked. <b>Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</b></em></p>
<p><b><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960773853,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960773853,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="600" class="align-center" alt="7960773853?profile=original" /></a></b></p>
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Along the Coast: Rescue, rehab and release — The saga of George Bush the turtle and those who nursed him back to health
https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/along-the-coast-rescue-rehab-and-release-the-saga-of-george-bush-
2017-10-04T17:00:00.000Z
2017-10-04T17:00:00.000Z
Mary Kate Leming
https://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960743079,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960743079,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="418" alt="7960743079?profile=original" /></a><em><strong>SEPT. 15:</strong> On the morning of his release, a loggerhead turtle, named George Bush by his rescuers, swims in a holding tank at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. <strong>Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
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<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>By Ron Hayes</strong><br /> <br /> On the Friday after Hurricane Irma’s assault on Palm Beach County — a morning so wonderfully blue and breezy you almost needed those fallen trees to convince you it had really happened — a white Ford Explorer left the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton and headed south to a private dock in Lighthouse Point.<br /> Riding in the back was a 206-pound loggerhead turtle named George Bush.<br /> Compared with what that turtle had already been through, it turned out the hurricane wasn’t that big a deal to him.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><br /> • • •</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"> Nearly four months earlier, about 8 o’clock on Sunday morning, May 28, two paddle-boarders had been resting maybe 300 yards off Delray Beach, when a stranger joined them.<br /> Will Vacha and Bryan Rydzewski are old friends and ardent oceangoers.<br /> “The north end of Delray Beach is our home,” Vacha recalled. “We were just sitting on our boards talking when this turtle came up to us and surfaced and stayed there, checking us out.”<br /> Vacha spotted a trail of blue fishing line dangling from the turtle’s left front flipper. They had no tools, but using the key to Vacha’s truck, Rydzewski was able to cut some of the line free.<br /> The turtle sank to the ocean floor and stayed there.<br /> “He’s pretty weak,” Rydzewski told Vacha. “He’s probably not going to move and eventually he’ll be prey to something bigger.”<br /> Rydzewski adjusted his goggles, swam down and helped the turtle to the surface once more. As they debated what to do, Vacha spotted two jet skiers approaching. A pair of pliers was offered and still more line removed.<br /> Now Vacha and Rydzewski tried to lift the turtle onto a paddleboard.<br /> “Not knowing much about sea turtles, I was impressed that he wasn’t aggressive at all,” Vacha said.<br /> After failing to get the turtle to ride the board, Rydzewski decided they should swim him to shore. As he pushed the turtle from behind, Vacha paddled alongside.<br /> “He’s not fighting me at all,” Rydzewski said.<br /> “We would rest every couple of feet, but at no point did it seem he was trying to get away,” Vacha recalled. “He was very cooperative.”<br /> On shore they flagged down Sgt. Bernard O’Donnell of the Gulf Stream Police Department, patrolling on his ATV. Joan Lorne, a longtime volunteer turtle monitor, happened by and called for help.<br /> “While we were waiting, we were able to really look at the damage done,” Vacha said, “and it wasn’t just a single line. A steel cable had wrapped itself around his armpit, basically.”<br /> Whitney Crowder, the turtle rehabilitation coordinator at Gumbo Limbo, was home in Boca Raton when the call came. She and her husband, Andrew, a marine biologist, drove up to Delray Beach. They loaded the loggerhead into the back of O’Donnell’s four-wheel ATV and went as far as the Sandoway Discovery Center, where they transferred the turtle to Crowder’s Toyota.<br /> Caitlin Bovery, also a rehab coordinator, met them in the Gumbo Limbo parking lot. The turtle was lifted onto a gurney and wheeled into the rehabilitation area. Dr. Maria Chadam, the center’s primary veterinarian for the past six years, was on the way.<br /> The badly injured turtle had no name at that point. But he had been rescued almost directly off George Bush Boulevard.</p>
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<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960743859,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960743859,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960743859?profile=original" /></a><em><strong>MAY 28:</strong> Will Vacha and Bryan Rydzewski coax the loggerhead to the beach so others can deal with his injured flipper. <strong>Photo provided by Joan Lorne</strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960743481,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960743481,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960743481?profile=original" /></a> <em>(l-r) Caitlin Bovery, Ali Courtemanche, Taylor Roe and Avion Gourdeen use a crash cart to wheel George Bush from the parking lot to the treatment center at Gumbo Limbo. <strong>Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960744064,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960744064,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960744064?profile=original" /></a><em>Andrew Crowder and his son Finlee watch as veterinarian Dr. Maria Chadam, Courtemanche and Roe work to remove the fishing line tangled around George Bush’s flipper (below). <strong>Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960743694,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960743694,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960743694?profile=original" /></a><br /> • • •</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><br /> When George Bush arrived at Gumbo Limbo, he weighed 190 pounds and was estimated to be about 20 years old, a young adult. A healthy loggerhead can live to be 80.<br /> The admittance notes said, “Lethargic. Severe entanglement around left shoulder. Prognosis on flipper poor.”<br /> An X-ray of the left flipper found no broken bones, and Chadam was able to remove all the fishing line, but the deep cuts had become infected.<br /> “This is a very lucky turtle,” Crowder reported a day or two later. “If we didn’t get him in when we did, he would definitely have lost his flipper.”<br /> She spoke too soon.<br /> By Tuesday, June 6, about 75 percent of the flipper had become infected and a wound culture found a flesh-eating bacteria attacking it.<br /> The turtle was transferred to the Palm Beach Zoo, where Chadam performed a partial amputation, which took about an hour. <br /> “A full amputation is a lot more invasive and difficult,” she explained. “We’re trying to save some part of his limb for help with steering, but we worry about the infection getting into the shoulder and bone and joint.”</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"> Five weeks later, on July 11, he was back at the zoo for a second operation.<br /> “The tissue had died off too much,” Chadam said. <br /> The second operation, to remove the entire flipper and humerus bone, took two hours because a loggerhead’s muscles are so firmly attached, the tendons and ligaments so tough that cutting through them takes time.<br /> “These guys are built like a pit bull,” Chadam said. “I must have dulled three scissors.”<br /> George Bush was put under a general anesthetic and a tube was placed in his trachea, then attached to a breathing machine while the remaining flipper and bone were removed.<br /> “He doesn’t like me too much now,” Chadam said when Bush was back in his tank and recuperating at Gumbo Limbo. “I’m the one who looks at his wounds and does things he doesn’t like. They’re not smart, but they’re instinctively intelligent.”<br /> A turtle can navigate with only three flippers, she said. “But he may have trouble mating. They use their front flippers to hold on to the female.”</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960744478,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960744478,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960744478?profile=original" /></a><em><strong>JULY 11:</strong> George Bush undergoes a second surgery, for a full amputation of the wounded flipper. The PVC pipe in his mouth protected the breathing machine tube that kept him going. <strong>Photo provided by Caitlin Bovery </strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"> On Friday, July 28, the sutures came out.<br /> “He still has a bit to go with the healing process,” Chadam reported, “but he did eat one squid, so he’s feeling better.”<br /> Through it all, George Bush was treated with antibiotics. His wounds were flushed with chlorhexidine, a disinfectant and antiseptic. Raw honey, a natural antibiotic, antimicrobial and antifungal, was applied.<br /> Slowly he recovered. He ate. He began to move about his tank. He weighed 206 pounds now.<br /> Finally, Chadam pronounced him well enough to go home. After nearly four months at the rehab center, George Bush would return to the sea on Friday, Sept. 15.<br /> And then Hurricane Irma struck.<br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960744657,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960744657,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960744657?profile=original" /></a><em><strong>JULY 28: </strong> Dr. Maria Chadam removes sutures from George Bush’s surgery. <strong>Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star</strong></em><br /> <br /> • • •</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><br /> “The turtles are going to be evacuated,” Crowder announced. “It’s going to be exhausting.”<br /> On Friday, Sept. 8, as residents wondered just where in Florida Irma would strike, the staff at Gumbo Limbo loaded up seven patients, including George Bush and a second loggerhead named Kraken, and drove them to the city’s Sugar Sand Park, well inland on Military Trail.<br /> The smaller turtles were each placed in a tub in a large, windowless room. Nearby, a plywood corral was constructed for the two big loggerheads. A board down the middle kept them apart.<br /> “We separate them because the males will kill each other,” Chadam said matter-of-factly. “They’re very mean.”<br /> Gumbo Limbo survived without any major damage, and on Monday afternoon, George Bush and his fellow evacuees returned to the center.<br /> Four days later, he was in the back of that Ford Explorer and on the way home.<br /> He was not alone, however.<br /> Following the Explorer was a white Ford minivan with thousands — thousands! — of hurricane refugees inside.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><br /> • • •</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><br /> When Hurricane Irma struck, the waves off our coast were alive with hatchlings, newborn turtles, not 3 inches long, swimming like mad for the weed line, those thick islands of floating sargassum eight or 10 miles out.<br /> The weeds mean safety. The brown algae provides a camouflage against predators. The tiny shrimp and crabs that lurk there provide a meal.<br /> “It’s called washback,” Caitlin Bovery said. “When the hurricane struck, they all got kicked back onshore by the storm surge. The fact that they’re even alive now is amazing.”<br /> After the storm, Gumbo Limbo got a call from the state Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission. Dedicated volunteers from New Smyrna Beach to Boca Raton had been gathering the stranded hatchlings off their beaches. Could the center help these hurricane refugees finally reach the weed line?<br /> The collected hatchings were delivered and inventoried, placed in 15 plastic bins and loaded into the minivan.<br /> On that sparkling Friday morning after Irma, two Gumbo Limbo vans set out for Lighthouse Point, bearing 2,523 baby turtles and one big loggerhead with only three flippers.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><br /> • • •</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><br /> Capt. Tom Campbell is a retired marine engineer with a 38-foot fishing boat called the Sand Dollar and an even bigger heart.<br /> He is volunteering his boat today without charging Gumbo Limbo. He never does.<br /> On board are Chadam, Whitney Crowder, Caitlin Bovery and the center’s rehab technicians Rebecca Mannen and Emily Mirowski, along with some family and friends. <br /> The hatchling bins are stacked in the bow and George Bush at the stern, resting on a canvas tarp with straps for easy lifting.<br /> “It’s super flat today,” Capt. Tom says as the Sand Dollar passes a 60-foot yacht that’s been tossed on its side by the storm. <br /> Once through the inlet, he blasts the radio, The Beach 102.7, rock sounds loud enough to be heard above the engines.<br /> The Sand Dollar bounds over the waves, then slows to a purr at the third reef out, a mile offshore. <br /> At 11 a.m., Chadam, Mirowski, Mannen and Capt. Tom’s friend Carmine Genovese each take a strap and lift George Bush to the side of the boat.<br /> “One! Two! Three!” someone calls, and George Bush is gone, sliding into the murky water and disappearing beneath the waves without so much as a goodbye wave.</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960744865,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960744865,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="547" alt="7960744865?profile=original" /></a><strong>SEPT. 15:</strong> In 70 feet of water near a hospitable reef, George Bush is released over the side of Tom Campbell’s boat and is home again.| <strong><a href="http://thecoastalstar.com/video/rescue-rehab-and-release">Video</a></strong><br /></em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em><strong>Photos and Video by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><br /> A half-hour later, the boat is nearly 8 miles offshore. The tower of the Boca Raton Resort & Club is a tiny pink finger against the blue sky, and the sargassum is thick here.<br /> Chadam, Bovery and a half dozen others leap into the sea and tread water as the bins are handed overboard, floating like small plastic lifeboats on the waves.<br /> The rescuers gather round and place the hatchlings on the surface and watch them paddle frantically toward the weeds. Handful after handful until all 2,523 babies are in the water, in the weeds, home.<br /> “That’s it!” And a cheer erupts.<br /> They climb back aboard, and as Capt. Tom steers the Sand Dollar toward land, his radio starts blasting Celebration, by Kool & The Gang.</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960744882,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960744882,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960744882?profile=original" /></a><em><strong>SEPT. 15:</strong> After the crew released loggerhead George Bush near shore for easy access to a safe reef, the boat traveled nearly 8 miles offshore from Boca Raton for the next release. These greens were among more than 2,500 turtle hatchlings released near mats of floating sargassum. Hatchlings naturally seek out sargassum for cover and food. </em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960745262,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960745262,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960745262?profile=original" /></a><em>Five of the seven species of sea turtles were represented in this release. Clockwise from the smallest one at top: loggerhead, hawksbill, green, Kemp’s ridley and leatherback. <strong>Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><br /> • • •</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><br /> On the trip back to Lighthouse Point, Chadam sits at the stern in a floppy straw hat and dark sunglasses, watching in silence as the weed line shrinks in the distance.<br /> What are the chances the hatchlings will make it, she is asked.<br /> Well, she says, the experts estimate that only one out of every 1,000 sea turtles survives to adulthood.<br /> Predators get them. Hurricanes get them. Blue fishing lines get them.<br /> Of the 2,523 baby turtles they’ve just released, she says, only two or three will live to be as old as George Bush.<em><strong><br /> <br /></strong></em></p>
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Gumbo Limbo Nature Center Returns Loggerhead Sea Turtle to the Sea
https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/gumbo-limbo-nature-center-returns-loggerhead-sea-turtle-to-the-se
2013-08-28T20:00:14.000Z
2013-08-28T20:00:14.000Z
Mary Kate Leming
https://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769
<div><p> For the past two decades, Gumbo Limbo Nature Center’s (GLNC) Sea Turtle<br />Conservation team has rescued sick and injured sea turtles throughout southern Palm Beach County. In January,<br />2010 efforts were stepped up with the opening of their Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Facility (STRF). Since then, over<br />240 injured or diseased sea turtles have been brought to the STRF for treatment. Turf, a sub adult loggerhead<br />turtle, was found in the intake canal of the St. Lucie Power Plant this past May.<br />When Turf arrived at GLNC, her prognosis was grim. Weighing only 68 pounds, she was 30‐40 pounds underweight.<br />STRF staff knew that the chances of this turtle surviving were very slim. Tests determined that Turf was<br />suffering from a severe blood infection. It is not known exactly how she got the infection, but just like humans,<br />sea turtles sometimes get sick, too. After emergency triage and 48 hours of critical care, Turf started responding<br />to medications and treatment, and developed a healthy appetite. She also proved to be one of the most charisma<br />sea turtles to come into GLNC, where she would often be looking out of her tank window with curiosity at<br />guests, or even enjoy a belly scratch from staff. After three short months of proper diet and medical treatment,<br />Turf has made a full recovery and is ready to be sent back to her ocean home.<br />Ryan Butts, Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Coordinator, explained that he and his staff knew that Turf was in critical<br />condition. “Turf was drastically underweight, and probably had not eaten for several months. Had she not been<br />rescued at the St. Lucie Power Plant, she probably would not have survived much longer out in the ocean.” said<br />Butts.<br />“Turf’s recovery was a wonderful surprise to us all at GLNC.” says Manager, Stefanie Ouelletie. “Many times sea<br />turtles found in such a declined condition do not survive.”<br />The public is invited to join Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in the release of Turf on Wednesday, September 4, 2013<br />at 4:30 pm at Spanish River Park in Boca Raton. Entrance fees to the park will be waived beginning at 3:30 PM for<br />those attending the release. The release will take place on the beach near the center tunnel. Visitors to the STRF<br />are invited to sign a large Bon Voyage card though Wednesday. Located at 1801 North Ocean Blvd, the Center is<br />open 7 days a week, 361 days a year. The suggested donation of $5 per person supports all aspects of the Center.<br />Gumbo Limbo Nature Center is committed to coastal and marine education, preservation, conservation, and<br />research. The Center is a collaborative project between The City of Boca Raton, The Greater Boca Raton Beach<br />and Park District, Florida Atlantic University, and Friends of Gumbo Limbo, a 501©3 organization.</p></div>
LOVING CARE: Injured turtle returns to the sea
https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/loving-care-injured-turtle-returns-to-the-sea
2012-11-29T16:46:26.000Z
2012-11-29T16:46:26.000Z
Mary Kate Leming
https://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769
<div><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960413078,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960413078,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="538" alt="7960413078?profile=original" /></a></strong><em>A crowd of well-wishers gathers to watch Ryan Butts release Cindy in the Atlantic Ocean. <strong>Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><strong>By Ron Hayes</strong><br /><br />Giving the turtle a name was easy. Giving her back to the sea took months.<br /> On July 28, a loggerhead turtle arrived at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center without a name, without a left flipper, without much chance of surviving.<br /> Two fishermen had brought her to the city marina in Pompano Beach that Saturday night. A shark had taken the left front flipper. Her right flipper was nearly severed and, judging by the teeth marks, her head had been in the shark’s mouth.<br /> “Sea turtles are usually only attacked if they’re already sick or injured,” explained Ryan Butts, the center’s turtle rehabilitation coordinator. “They float when they’re sick or injured, and that makes them vulnerable, so it’s amazing she got away.”<br /> Butts and his team of volunteers named their patient Cindy, and nursed her for the next three months. Her right flipper was sutured, her blood drawn to monitor glucose levels, her wounds cleansed daily and treated with honey, a natural disinfectant and antibiotic.<br /> And then, on Nov. 15, Cindy went down to the sea again.<br /> “You almost feel like your children are going off to kindergarten for the first time,” said Butts. “There’s a certain sadness, but that’s overshadowed by the happiness and pride you feel.”<br /> Can a turtle conquer the ocean waves without a left front flipper?<br /> “They learn to adapt with very little problem at all,” he said. “The propulsion comes from their front flippers, with the rear used for steering, so Cindy will use her right rear flipper to compensate.”<br /> As he spoke, a camera crew from television’s National Geographic Wild channel scurried about, filming the preparations. In town to record a segment about the center’s new artificial reef tank, they had happily found themselves able to document Cindy’s release as well.<br /> Nearby, a dozen children lined up to sign a Bon Voyage poster:<br /> Enjoy the seas.<br /> Take care.<br /> Good luck.<br /> We will miss you.<br /> Cindy is the man!</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960412887,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960412887,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="538" alt="7960412887?profile=original" /></a></em><em>Ryan Butts (left) and assistants used a kiddie pool on a landscaping cart to transfer Cindy from her blue plastic home to the ocean.</em></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><br /> Shortly before 4:30 p.m., Butts and three assistants lifted her out of the blue plastic tank that had been her hospital room and placed her on scales. Cindy had come to the center weighing 115 pounds. She was leaving at 130.<br /> Transferred to a green wading pool atop a cart, they wheeled her out of the rehab center to an ATV, climbed aboard and drove away, followed by other ATVs and the National Geographic crew.<br /> Traveling slowly, the cavalcade rolled into the parking lot and through the gate, crossed North Ocean Boulevard to Red Reef Park, and climbed the dunes.<br /> On the beach below, nearly 350 men, women and children — especially children — awaited her arrival, alerted by the Friends of Gumbo Limbo.<br /> Cindy remained unimpressed by the attention.<br /> “There’s a sandbar not far offshore,” Butts said, “so we may have to give her a little nudge.”<br /> As he spoke, a black thundercloud sailed in from the west.<br /> Butts and three or four volunteers lifted Cindy from her wading pool and placed her gently into the rising tide as the crowd broke into cheers, hoots and applause.</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960412866,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960412866,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="538" alt="7960412866?profile=original" /></a><em>Nearly 350 well-wishers braved the surf and an impending downpour to watch Cindy return to the ocean.</em></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><br /> Butts followed along in the surf as the turtle swam into the waves, then south.<br /> Out on the sandbar, a lone nature photographer named Ben Hicks kept watch.<br /> Moments later, as the first fat raindrops fell, he raised an arm and signaled to Butts.<br /> Cindy had passed the sandbar under her own power.<br /> She was gone.<br /> She was home. </p></div>