Abstract

Along the coast of Georgia, eight clusters of barrier islands are separated from the mainland by an extensive system of salt marshes and sounds. Unlike many of the developed barrier islands of the east coast, the Georgia barrier islands still retain much of their native wilderness. Approximately two-thirds of the islands are designated as parks, wildlife refuges, research reserves, and heritage preserves, with limited or no public access.

Five species of sea turtles can be found in Georgia’s coastal waters, but the loggerhead (Caretta caretta) is the only one to nest in Georgia in abundance. Approximately 1000 loggerhead sea turtle nests are found on the Georgia barrier islands each year. Green (Chelonia mydas) and leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea), turtles nest occasionally in Georgia and use the coastal waters as foraging habitat and as a migratory pathway.

All five species of sea turtles found in Georgia are protected by state and federal law, principally by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Loggerhead turtles are currently listed as threatened under the ESA.

Sea turtles face several hazardous obstacles in their daily lives such as: drowning and entanglement in nets and fishing line; ingestion of plastics, hooks, and other human debris; propeller wounds; environmental pollutants; infectious and parasitic diseases; and injury from natural predators such as sharks.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources (Georgia DNR) coordinates all sea turtle conservation efforts in the state. The mandate of Georgia’s Sea Turtle Conservation Program (GSTCP) is to maintain the long-term viability of sea turtle populations in Georgia. The GSTCP has three primary components including research, management, and education. The primary activities of the conservation program include loggerhead turtle nest protection and monitoring, monitoring of live and dead stranded sea turtles, working with fishermen to reduce sea turtle mortality, and educational programs. The Georgia DNR currently coordinates 12 loggerhead nest protection programs on all barrier island beaches.

St. Catherine’s Island (SCI) is one of the barrier islands off the coast of Georgia. The island is managed by the SCI Foundation (SCIF). Conservation efforts and wildlife research have been a major focus for the island’s activities for decades. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has managed a breeding program for endangered species, the Wildlife Survival Center (WSC), on the island since 1974. More recently, the WSC has become involved with health issues pertaining to free-ranging wildlife in Georgia. These programs tie in nicely with other ongoing conservation efforts on SCI and in the state of Georgia.

The SCI Sea Turtle Conservation Program was instituted in 1990 to conserve loggerhead sea turtles nesting on the beaches of SCI, Georgia. The holistic program integrates conservation of threatened and endangered sea turtles with applied research and conservation education. Fourteen teachers per year are trained in conservation of loggerhead sea turtles and practice while in residence on the island for 7 days. These teachers take the learned content and real-world experiences back to their classrooms to teach school children about sea turtle conservation. The program has impacted over 138 teachers and 120,000 school children. Active role modeling of integrated science is provided as teacher-interns learn conservation skills, processing skills, field triage, and apply critical thinking in the field in an exceptional hands-on, real-world conservation project.

The quality of nesting habitat on SCI, Georgia, has significantly declined since 1995 due to erosional effects thought to be driven by rising sea level, attenuation of long-shore migration of sand caused by dredging of the Savannah harbor, and lack of local fluvial sand systems. A quantitative assessment tool was established to score the habitat in terms of back beach geomorphology including presence of inlets, bluffs, and scarps; berms, terraces, and dunes; wash-over and wash-in fans; and the presence of relict marsh mud or skeletal trees. Rapid habitat assessment is performed annually during the nesting season using point data based upon a beach grid or GPS data. The assessments indicate SCI currently hosts approximately 15% adequate nesting habitat. The rapid assessment tool was modified by Georgia DNR and has been used since 1999 for temporal study of potentially deteriorating habitat and for longitudinal assessment of Georgia sea turtle habitat.

St. Catherine’s Island is a sentinel island for assessing health of sea turtle nesting habitat on the Atlantic Coast of the USA, predicting future history of successively more distant barrier islands in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas: a model potentially transferable to other areas of the world’s oceans and to other coastal rookeries.

Management plans for conserving sea turtles must accommodate geologic factors and processes that can rapidly modify nesting habitat on a world-wide basis as global warming continues to cause rising sea levels and as humans continue to modify sand movement in the coastal environment. More details on this program are available at: http://www2.gasou.edu/cturtle/001welc.html (VIN editor: Link not accessible 2/8/21).

As sea turtle populations continue to dwindle, it becomes more critical for scientists to ascertain their health status in the wild and to address the health-related problems that could decimate already fragile populations. In 1999, the Field Veterinary Program (FVP) of the WCS began a sea turtle health assessment program in the Caribbean and Atlantic. The initial study sites included four key sea turtle nesting and/or foraging grounds in Congo, Costa Rica, Gabon, and Nicaragua. Turtles in the study were green, hawksbill, loggerhead, Kemp’s ridley, olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea), and leatherbacks. In 2001, Georgia was selected as the North American site because of the infrastructure and expertise already in place at the WSC. The program is a collaborative effort between researchers from a variety of institutions. The objectives of this program are to establish baseline blood values, and to determine the prevalence of select parasitic and infectious agents, fibropapillomatosis, and contaminants in free-ranging sea turtles at the study sites. Additionally, the project has provided training to biologists, NGO staff, veterinarians, and students in sea turtle health-monitoring techniques.

The Georgia portion of the study is still ongoing. We are collaborating with several ongoing studies to obtain samples from the various sea turtle life stages and sexes (eggs, hatchlings, subadults, and adult males and females). Diagnostic tests performed on live sea turtles include complete blood counts, plasma biochemical panels, plasma protein electrophoresis, pesticide and heavy metal screens, reproductive hormone levels, infectious disease serology, epibiota, and internal parasite identification.

Biomedical samples for health assessments are collected from nesting loggerhead sea turtles on Blackbeard Island National Wildlife Refuge in GA (40 nesting females evaluated from 2001 to 2003).

Biomedical samples are collected from various age classes and sexes of free ranging sea turtles, using facilities on the Georgia Bulldog, a University of Georgia Marine Extension research vessel (25 subadults, 5 adult females, and 8 males have been evaluated over 3 years).

Unhatched eggs from approximately 50 loggerhead sea turtle nests on SCI have been necropsied each year for the past 3 years. The eggs are evaluated for fertility, stage of embryonic death, and deformities. Some embryos are selected for histopathology, and contaminant analysis is performed on representative yolk samples.

Biomedical samples are collected from freshly dead or euthanatized stranded sea turtles for histopathology, parasitology, microbiology, and contaminant analysis following standardized necropsy protocols.

A complete health assessment, similar to that performed on the free-ranging turtle population, is used to assess live stranded sea turtles in Georgia (15 loggerheads, 3 greens, and 3 Kemps ridleys have been evaluated to date).

Sea turtles are often found stranded dead and less commonly alive on the beaches and other coastal areas in Georgia. Approximately 10 live turtles are found injured or ill on Georgia beaches each year. Over the past decade, there has been a general trend of a steady increase in stranded turtles along the southeastern US Atlantic coastline. Currently, sea turtles that strand alive in Georgia are evaluated and treated by one of the authors (TMN). Since there are no facilities in Georgia to rehabilitate the turtles, after the initial evaluation, they must be transported long distances to reach a suitable facility. There have been occasions when all the facilities were filled to capacity and the turtles had to be prematurely released or housed in suboptimal conditions.

For the past 2.5 years, the WSC staff members have been doing intensive fund raising to build a sea turtle rehabilitation center on SCI. It was recently decided that Jekyll Island would be a more suitable site for the facility for several reasons. Jekyll Island is centrally located along the Georgia coast. There is a bridge to access the island allowing for interaction with the general public. In addition, this direct access will allow injured or sick turtles found along the Georgia coast to be moved quickly to the center. Sea turtle conservation and education programs are already in place on Jekyll Island. The Jekyll Island Sea Turtle Project conducts nightly beach walks on Jekyll Island during the sea turtle nesting season. There were over 200 loggerhead sea turtle nests laid on Jekyll Island during the 2003 nesting season.

A 5,500 square foot historic power plant will be renovated and serve as the Jekyll Island Sea Turtle Rehabilitation and Education Center. Most of the funds necessary to build a suitable veterinary clinic, turtle tanks and filtration, and an education facility are already in place. These funds have been obtained through the Woodruff Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, The Environmental Regional Network (TERN), a fundraiser called the “Turtle Crawl”, private donations, Jekyll Island Authority, and the Jekyll Island Foundation. Fundraising efforts are still ongoing. The WSC will provide the veterinary care for the turtles presented to the facility and will continue long-term health assessment on stranded and free-ranging sea turtles in Georgia. The center will rehabilitate ill and injured sea turtles stranded in Georgia and will also receive turtles from surrounding states as needed and if space is available. The center will also provide care to cold stunned turtles from more northern states.

Over the past few years, the WSC staff has had the opportunity to spread the word about our programs with sea turtle conservation and other conservation efforts involving native and non-native wildlife. Numerous presentations on sea turtle conservation have been given to the general public, local middle and high schools, rotary clubs, undergraduate and veterinary students, zoological parks, and veterinary associations. Several workshops have been held for schoolteachers and the scientific community on SCI and other barrier islands. The Jekyll Island Sea Turtle Rehabilitation and Education Center will provide an excellent opportunity to expand our sea turtle conservation education programs.