How do you get 500 sea turtles moved hundreds of miles down the East Coast of the United States in a day? It sounds like the set-up to some kind of corny zoological joke, but the question was no laughing matter when the head of the Georgia Sea Turtle Center posed it to Leslie Weinstein in November 2014. Fortunately, Weinstein had a ready answer: general aviation.
Frigid water and strong onshore winds had caused massive numbers of hypothermic sea turtles to be washed onto the beaches near Cape Cod. By mid-November, more than 1,000 turtles had been stranded, many of them the Kemp’s ridley, the world’s smallest and most critically endangered marine turtle. Rehabilitation facilities were overwhelmed and about 500 turtles had to be transported to facilities throughout the southeast. The catch: They had to arrive in a day and be maintained at a 70-degree temperature.
Weinstein is a member of the development board of the University of Florida’s Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research and owner of True-Lock, a company that makes specialized fasteners for aircraft. He has both a big heart for sea turtles and a vast network of friends in GA. With help from groups such as Pilots N Paws and the National Association of Flight Instructors, he spread the word that the sea turtles needed help. More than 1,000 pilots contacted him to volunteer. Weinstein ultimately tapped about 20 to participate.
One of those pilots was Joan Evert, a flight instructor from Panama City, Florida. She saw the rescue as an ideal opportunity to work with her daughter, Danielle Brennan, a high school biology teacher and advocate for marine life. “This was the perfect opportunity for two professional women to combine their areas of expertise,” Evert said.
Evert and Brennan flew on December 15, the last day of the rescue flights. That morning, a U.S. Coast Guard HC-144A Ocean Sentry took off from Boston and headed for Gulfport, Mississippi, with 85 turtles in banana boxes destined for three separate facilities. Evert and Brennan flew out of Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP) in a Grumman American AA-5 they’d borrowed from a friend to meet the Coast Guard airplane. Evert’s mission was to carry 13 of the reptiles back to ECP, where someone would drive them to Panama City’s Gulf World Marine Park.
The biggest challenge was keeping the back of the airplane at 70 degrees, a level that made it quite hot in the cockpit. Brennan used a digital thermometer to ensure the temperature remained in range, and one turtle enjoyed her attentiveness so much that every time she reached back to check the numbers, he poked his snout out of his box to greet her.
“We left ECP in the morning with two souls on board and returned in the afternoon with 15!” Evert marveled. “Having a purpose like this made it a grand flight.”
GA pilots helped to save an estimated 552 endangered sea turtles. In a species where every turtle counts, that’s huge. Weinstein says it takes about 2,000 hatchlings to produce a breeding pair—and they might not produce offspring for three or four decades. “The mortality rate is significant,” he said. “The rescued turtles were juveniles, about 5 years old. Had we not been able to recover and recuperate them, the impact on the sea turtle population would have been devastating.”
In early January, the Coast Guard released 19 rehabilitated turtles near the North Carolina coast, including several that were stranded in Massachusetts.
“Will there be another issue with the sea turtles down the road? There very well could be,” Weinstein said. “The use of GA is the answer.”
Related Articles
