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Or so it thought. Most people would have given up on UCF, perhaps with muttered irritation or disappointment, and applied elsewhere. But Boyd was not “most people.” He wrote back to a bemused graduate advisor, starting with a breezy salutation “Hi, John!”, not complaining, but simply commenting that the news was “rather surprising,” and recommending that his application be revisited. Boyd had his sights firmly set on UCF, and he would accept no other. He enlisted Lew Ehrhart’s support and mine as well, which was freely given in both cases. Lew was semi-retired and I was an adjunct professor with my own research institute to keep me busy; but we were his turtle godfathers, and we recognized a special case when we saw one. Boyd also provided a crackerjack letter of recommendation from Jeff Seminoff, his friend and supervisor at NMFS. He flew back to Orlando to make his case, and, well steeped in the art of friendly persuasion, he brought me a rare gift for the Institute – a magnificent carapace, with scutes, of a large black turtle (Chelonia agassizi) from the Revillagigedo Islands population, which I think he carried as checked baggage. He also submitted a new and revised three-page single-spaced letter to accompany his application – one that spelled out his history, carefully deemphasizing his athletic achievements, and describing his lifelong infatuation with marine turtles. A visit with his father to Mazatlan when he was nine years old had shown him his first sea turtle, and a Christmas gift of Encyclopedia of Turtles from his mother combined with his watching a PBS Special on the leatherback turtle and its mysterious life cycle clinched the deal. His mother still remembers having to tell him to stop cutting pictures out of my book to stick on the wall of his bedroom.

Boyd had a fine-tuned disdain for the word ‘no’ that obviously got him into graduate school, and several years earlier helped get his position with the NMFS turtle team. In fact, “thanks but no thanks” were the first words he ever heard from Jeff Seminoff when asking about volunteer opportunities with NMFS. He had been interested in working at Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla California as part of the Marine Turtle Team and was not going to let this negative response curb his enthusiasm. After two more telephone conversations, he finally convinced Seminoff to meet him one December evening in 2002. His ‘foot in the door’ phrase went along the lines of ‘please just let me come by the lab to speak with you in person and if after that you still don’t need any assistance I’ll leave you alone’. Shortly thereafter the two met and, needless to say, Boyd got the gig.

He knew there would be diversions along the way, but he planned to be a turtle man – indeed, by now he already was one, having done in-depth field studies of black turtles in both western Mexico and the Galapagos during his NMFS years. The doubters in the Biology Department administration fell silent, and his application was accepted.

Months before he left California to take up his UCF appointment, I happened to go to San Diego for a Turtle Survival Alliance meeting, and Boyd insisted that I stay in his apartment in a wonderful beachfront corner of western San Diego that had the hippie atmosphere of Gainesville in the 1960s. With characteristic hospitality, he vacated his bedroom on my behalf, and after the TSA meeting was over we joined up with Jeff Seminoff to explore Central Baja and make a quixotic search for pond turtles in the desert at the extreme southern terminus of their range. I had not seen Baja for over thirty years, and was delighted to see that the magnificent cactus forests were still intact despite the massive southward sprawl of the scrofulous border towns since my last visit. For several days we found no turtles, but finally we hit paydirt. We walked for miles along a bone-dry rocky canyon at the southernmost point of our trip, that eventually led to a cool creek with gin-clear water less than a foot deep. The three of us fanned out, and when we re-grouped after half an hour I was triumphantly clutching a live adult Pacific pond turtle. To my surprise, so was Boyd; and so was Jeff.

So the climax was exciting, but the trip was also a chance for me to get to know Boyd, a chance that I am most grateful not to have missed. I will always be grateful for the amount of quality time we had during the brief year that I knew him. I never knew anyone so unremittingly positive and happy, so committed, so optimistic. Boyd was a good looking dude, over six feet tall and with the wiry physique of an athlete. Although a Pennsylvanian by background, you could only think “California” (or “surfer”) when you saw his tanned features and half-smile of utter confidence. Having finished all preparations for his journey, he set out from San Diego for Florida in his camper-van, with his worldly possessions and his two beloved dogs in the back. His route angled north to take him through Las Vegas, where he picked up a live alligator snapping turtle for me that Bob Winokur had kept for no less than fifty years. Upon arrival in Orlando there was some confusion as to where his dogs would stay until he found a place to live, but Tim Walsh came to the rescue and offered to keep them at his house in Sanford. He quickly joined and was welcomed and accepted by Lew Ehrhart’s turtle crew, which consisted mostly of female graduate students a decade or more younger than himself. With his athlete’s physique, he was able single-handedly to pull in nets laden with loggerheads and green turtles, doubtless aware of the admiring glances from his fellow students. He also shook me out of my own procrastination in going out on the lagoons to join the turtle crew. I went out twice and had a great time.

Whenever he found a deceased turtle specimen of note – a washed-up “Barnacle Bill” loggerhead, or an adult male of the same species, even the first adult Kemp’s ridley from Florida I had seen, Boyd never forgot our appetite for such things at the Institute and he brought them to our door.

While I was in San Diego, Boyd confessed that he would regard it as the opportunity of a lifetime if he could join me on an expedition I was planning to the crater area of Volcan Wolf, the highest mountain in the Galapagos Islands and the site of the recent discovery of a previously unknown population of giant tortoises, possibly the largest population in the archipelago. Others had asked if they could come, and with just two exceptions I had declined the applications. But Boyd was the most persuasive man alive, and I was glad to add him to the list. He also, like Daniel Fitter and Joe Flanagan, had considerable Galapagos field experience, and his status as an athlete as well made him eminently well qualified for Volcan Wolf.

Reflecting on his first trip to the Islands with Boyd, Jeff Seminoff marveled at Boyd’s tenacity: “In early 2005 when I was planning on going to the Galapagos I had a conversation with Boyd during which he found out I was going, at which point he made sure that he was part of the plan. He and I had been working together for about a year at that point and I was only too happy to have a wingman to come along on the trip. What I wasn’t aware of is how little sleep he required each day! After getting out to the islands, Boyd’s passion came through so distinctly....and the guy basically slept only about 2 hrs. a night. We’d be at nesting beach field camps and while everyone else was sleeping after the night’s patrols, Boyd would be out walking the beach, getting ready for daylight so he could take more pictures. We’re talking 3 AM after an already long night of work, walking the beach and putting satellite tags out on turtles. It did come at a price, however, as I remember a couple of days during which he was basically sleeping at the dinner table with his eyes opened, a sort of glazed look. Of course, Boyd absolutely refused to admit that he was tired. Always up to the task, he would load up his gear again and off to the beach we’d go. Night after night for nearly three weeks.”

Various delays presented themselves, and the Volcan Wolf expedition has still not materialized although the three of us left still hope it will. An offer to share a helicopter with BBC did not materialize, and the Galapagos Park authorities, who had suggested the trip in the first place, seemed to have trouble making up their minds about permission. Finally, Joe and Boyd went ahead to Galapagos to see what could be cleared up by a personal visit, and they returned, somewhat frustrated, but with a general plan that the expedition could be done in early 2007. We may still do it but, without Boyd, it won’t be the same.

Having arrived in Florida, Boyd was anxious to get started on his thesis research work. Already 37 years old, he did not want to be fifty before he got his Ph.D. Never was there a student with such drive, such motivation. Nothing could hold him back. In the Galapagos and in Pacific Mexico he had considerable experience in catching sea turtles in the water by leaping on them from a boat, a technique known as “turtle rodeo” that was pioneered in Australia. This exciting technique appealed both to his scientific and to his adventurous side. He researched it extensively by means of email with the Australians, and he decided that the one component of green turtle studies that had not yet been covered by the UCF crew was the life, movements and migrations of male turtles.

On his last visit to the Institute, Boyd described the technique that he proposed to use. Wearing a weight belt and diving mask, but without SCUBA equipment, he would jump on to courting or mating male green turtles at the sea surface near the Brevard County nesting beaches. Grabbing on to the edges of the carapace of the turtle, he would be quickly taken down as the turtle dived, and then he would get a grip on the front of the shell that would allow him to point the turtle upwards so that it would bring him back to the surface as if in an elevator. If the turtle failed to cooperate, he would simply abandon it and re-surface; indeed, he did not expect more than one in ten attempts to be successful. I told him that I personally would be terrified to do such a thing, but then I am a rather modest swimmer; he was a champion.

Two weeks later came the fateful day. August 10 2006. The UCF turtle team was deployed between three boats, catching turtles the old fashioned way, in nets. Boyd was in the same boat as Lew Ehrhart and several students. They were the last boat in, and were heading back to shore when the students noticed a turtle near the surface. The boat slowed to get a better look, and Boyd decided to rodeo it, hoping to add another turtle to his in-water study data set. The water was about thirty feet deep, and the 19 foot Boston Whaler was about 400 yards off the beach, 3 miles north of Sebastian Inlet. The crew expected Boyd to resurface within a minute or less; this was free diving, and even a super-fit athlete can only hold his breath for so long. But Boyd did not come up. Cell phones permitted a fast alert to emergency authorities, but after hours of search Boyd could not be found.

What happened?

We’ll never know. But what we do know is that when his body was found on the surface by a helicopter patrol four days later, there were no signs of violent trauma of any kind; he still had a glove on one hand for gripping the turtle, and the other hand bare to grip his nose for pressure release during fast ascent. It was a demise from another age, a Beowolf-like story of being borne to the bottom of the sea by a giant reptile. Boyd would have enjoyed that thought. Boyd had only been in Florida for a few months, and one would have imagined that his circle of local acquaintances and friends would be limited. But it was not. His people gathered, a week later, on the beach near Sebastian Inlet at dusk. It was a luminous evening, with unusually calm turquoise water and a truly spectacular sunset inland. And about a hundred people came. They ranged from a dozen quietly sobbing early teenage girls whom Boyd coached at soccer, to senior faculty and administrators from UCF. Boyd’s mother Diana, brother Dean, sister-in-law, girlfriend, and close family friends were there too. And of course the turtle people of all ages came to say goodbye. As we each had an opportunity to speak fondly of our adventures and experiences with Boyd, a sea turtle popped its head out of the water and gazed towards to shore - for a brief moment - and was gone.

Boyd’s family has launched a fund in his memory. Details may be found at <http://www.boydlyonseaturtlefund.org>. It will be administered through the Ocean Foundation.