Sea Turtles, Shrimp and the Golden Islands of Georgia

The Atlantic seaboard is home to several species of sea turtles feeding in the waters and nesting on offshore islands like the shifting barrier islands of the South Georgia Coast. Known as the Golden Islands, Cumberland, Saint Simons and Jekyll are dynamic islands of sand that change shape with the forces of storms and currents. The Gulf Stream meandering offshore serves as a conveyor belt up the coastline for a marine animals from whales to sharks to sea turtles, and the sea turtles favorite food, jellyfish.

As evidenced by several old fortresses, these islands served as great strategic importance to the military from as far back as the first Spanish Explorers through the Civil War and World War II. Today, Jekyll still hosts a naval submarine base with nuclear submarines. Now, the islands are primarily resort and vacation destinations, but also serve as nesting sites for Loggerhead and Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtles.

Of the the three local barrier islands, Cumberland Island, as a National Seashore is the least inhabited and the least developed.

One night we joined the Georgia Sea Turtle Center's turtle watch team searching for nesting Loggerhead sea turtles. With two young biologists we patrolled along 15 km stretch of sand into the wee hours searching for the large females. We were able to quickly measure and identify the turtles by their flipper tags before they returned to the sea.  We were accompanied by Tommy Coffman, a budding 5 year old biologist who joined us on the nest patrol as we traversed the tide line with the biologists from the Center. We observed two large females as they emerged to lay their eggs up the beach, but on both occasions the large turtles weighing well over 100 pounds returned in what's is a called a false crawl. Although the stretch along the eastern shore has relatively good light control sea turtles can be spooked by humans and return to the sea, (sea turtles are very light sensitive, and even emerging babies can confuse lights ashore with the moon and  gravitate inland instead of to sea). 

Tommy catalyzed the experience with his enthusiasm and leaped out of the patrol vehicle and ran to the first female Loggerhead as she crawled from the gentle surf. He helped the biologists measure and weigh the turtles and collect tag information, all the while educating us on his other favorite sea animal- sharks.

One of the turtles was a Kemp's Ridley that had died without any obvious signs of trauma. Considered critically endangered, the Kemps Ridley were seriously impacted by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf in 2010. Offshore, the bright light of shrimp trawlers reminded me that sea turtles share the waters with humans as well as the land.  Each year thousands of sea turtles drown in the nets intended for shrimp. Although most of these fisheries are required to have TEDs also known as a Turtle Excluder Devices, a kind of trap door that allow s entrapped turtles to escape drowning in the nets.  Some inshore fleets are exempt and other fishermen more concerned about losing some

Later that evening we encountered another dead sea turtle. One of the more dirty fisheries, shrimp seiners also kill marine mammals and other life with their desired catch. Shrimp from small artisanal fisheries or fisheries with TEDS and tight scrutiny are more desirable, but few customers know if their shrimp has been caught unsustainably. If the shrimp is a cheap all you can-eat buffet like the Red Lobster Endless Shrimp, it is likely that the meal has a large environmental price tag with it.

The dead turtles left a sobering effect on Tommy and he might even think twice before ordering shrimp at one of the many restaurants that line the south Atlantic and Gulf shore.

Another day we road bicycles along a 3 mile stretch of undeveloped sand on Cumberland Island. Light camping is allowed and a few remaining structures owned privately, or by the Park are on the island, but the impacts by humans are far lighter. A long white sand beach edged with native dunes and grasses lines the eastern shore. There is little light at night to confuse the fledgling babies or deter the laying females.  We spotted several crawl marks up the beach and the signs of buried sea turtle nests.  These tell tale crawls would advertise the eggs and the mother turtle’s presence from poachers, but here they are safe.

A positive note is that the nests for Loggerheads in the US are increasing and our beach patrol on the undeveloped Cumberland showed many nests high in the dunes, with as many as 60 nests already recorded this early in the season.  Sea Turtles have a tough road to their survival, and all seven species are threatened or endangered, including the mighty Leatherback which can grow as large as a Volkswagen beetle.  These ancient sea turtles also occur off the California coastline feeding on our fat jellyfish, and migrate all the way across the Pacific to nest in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. We actually observed one of these increasingly rare sea turtles on one of our Farallon Island Wildlife Excursion this month.

Sea turtles are wonderful animals and a delight to observe swimming in the wild. Watching a young child become excited by an animal whose ancestors have swam for 400 million years inspires me to help protect them and gives me hope that the species might endure.