This is Nicholas Mrosovsky of the University of Toronto and Jean Beasley, founder and director of the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, chatting about turtles and conservation about a week ago. Nicholas was in North Carolina to give a talk at the Duke University Marine Lab and also to meet with various turtle people, including his former graduate student (that's me!). In addition to the talk and his visit to the Turtle Hospital, I also took him to Bogue Banks, to see the state of the beach after several renourishment projects.

I think he was interested to see the different impacts of nourishment, including some of the color differences between the new material and the original sand. He also said he was shocked by the presence of cars/trucks on the beaches. I guess he is used to more remote and undeveloped beaches in other areas of the world, where driving on the beach is rare or unheard of.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This kind of scene is a familiar one in the months of September-December in North Carolina: investigating a dead sea turtle. In the present case, this is a large juvenile loggerhead that stranded alive (barely) in Carteret County but died while en route to the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rehabilitation and Rescue Center. Wendy Cluse (on the left) brought it to CMAST where she and Dr. Nosilla Elttut (on the right) investigated it more thoroughly. You can see how emaciated and leech-infested this turtle was (the brown patches are leech egg clusters). Wendy and Nosilla collected various samples for analyses and comparison with other thin sick stranded turtles found along the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia.

Posted by Matthew Godfrey at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)