News

Spring is the season of comings and goings. Winter visitors will soon be leaving South County as they do every year. Even the moon left us, hiding in Earth’s shadow for about an hour on March 14 in the only lunar eclipse we could see here in 2025. 

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Liza Thornton (l-r), Joan Lorne, Darlene Duggan, Ginny Cairo, Sally Willis and Lydia Weis spend hours on the beach collecting discarded bottle caps to turn into art, such as this octopus. Photos provided

By Ron Hayes

When she’s home in Colorado, Sall

Down year for nests hints at another surge in 2025

By Steve Plunkett

Following a record-breaking 2023, people who monitor sea turtle nests up and down south Palm Beach County’s coast faced an easier workload this season. And the season, which offici

New beach lighting rules — The Town Council on Sept. 26 approved amendments updating its ordinance on sea turtles and beach bonfires after discussing the matter at three monthly meetings and a workshop and a “second first reading” of the changes in A

Crows check out a nest on the beach in Ocean Ridge, while another (below, right) flies overhead. Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Rich Pollack

The crows know.

Along our beaches, the loud and large black birds show off their smarts by trackin

(l-r) Lauren Hitselberger, Dr. Shelby Loos and Kara Portocarrero work on Terra, the first turtle to be rehabbed at Gumbo Limbo since March 2023. Photos provided by Coastal Stewards

By Steve Plunkett

Armed with a new state permit, the nonprofit Coasta

Amelia Pollitt, 5, watches Morgan, a green sea turtle who was returned last month to Gumbo Limbo Nature Center after a stay at a Juno Beach facility. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

By Mary Hladky and Steve Plunkett

Four-year-old Jack Gray of Boca Raton

Morgan, a resident sea turtle at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center from 2014 until being ordered removed last year, has returned and is now in the center's shipwreck aquarium, Boca Raton city officials announced on Jan. 10. Photo provided

VIDEO: Morgan bac

By Steve Plunkett                                                                                                

The year 2023 was not a good one for the nonprofit group originally founded to support the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton.

Th

Related: Boca Raton: Former Gumbo Limbo employees start new sea turtle care nonprofit

By Steve Plunkett

The city of Boca Raton has a new strategy to regain permission to house sea turtles at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, but there still is no firm d

Related: Boca Raton: City changes tack on who should hold permit to house turtles

By Steve Plunkett

People who want to help endangered and threatened sea turtles survive have a new nonprofit they can support.

Two former Gumbo Limbo Nature Center empl

Stewards work to return animals to Gumbo Limbo

By Steve Plunkett

Before sea turtles can return to the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, the state says Boca Raton must transfer “ownership or control” of the center’s two multimillion-dollar aquariums to the

ABOVE: Rebecca Germany, sea turtle conservation assistant at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, excavates a loggerhead nest in Boca Raton three days after the eggs had hatched.
BELOW LEFT: A baby loggerhead makes its way to the ocean after being rescued by

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 h

It could take months before turtles are back at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. File photo

Letters to the Editor: Nonprofit chair hails ‘exciting times’ ahead for Gumbo Limbo|Retired leader of turtle facility laments ‘black eye’ for city|Former voluntee

Diane Hextall and Suzie Hiles walk zone 4 as representatives of the Highland Beach turtle program. On mornings that they do not find any turtle nests from the previous night, they collect rubbish and assess beach conditions. Hextall has worked for

Staff and volunteers at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center had to move nine sea turtles to other facilities because Gumbo Limbo no longer had a license to treat them. Photo provided

By Steve Plunkett

Gumbo Limbo Nature Center’s injured and recuperating sea

The first sea turtle of the summer has nested — a huge, awe-inspiring leatherback. Our volunteers are out again at dawn looking for the V-shaped trails in the sand that show the arrival of our ancient, reptile visitors.
These leathery ladies are the

March brings five minutes of spring to subtropical South Florida.
It also heralds eight months of sea turtle nesting season, which usually draws more than 20,000 female loggerhead, leatherback, Kemp’s ridley and hawksbill turtles to Palm Beach County