Topsail Beach, NC - The Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center

Sea Turtle Hospital News

You’d never know Spring is here by the crazy weather, but we could tell it’s finally arrived by the increased number of nose-prints on our garage door windows. Our adoring public can’t wait to get in, and our patients can’t wait to get out!

We had a lot of visitors dropping by during the school break hoping that we were open - ’twas not to be. We’re wrapping up our busiest winter ever, with up to 48 turtles under our care at one time. Even though a boatload of them caught an early ride to the Gulf Stream we’re still carapace-to-carapace with three-dozen very impatient patients.   

Left: Elly Saiz (twenty-months-old) of Glenwood, MD gets up close to sea turtle "Brownie" on her first visit to Topsail Island.

Our experiment with turtle communes (the quads, two sets of triplets and a set of twins) is a rousing success. When given the choice of  "get along or get gone" these little greens decided that they would suck it up and play nice together. After a month of sharing quarters there hasn’t been one incident of biting or bullying that we’ve noticed. There’s an occasional flipper collision or head butt during breakfast, but it appears that they’re just getting in each other’s way to be the first one at the food trough. And we’ve noticed that the "families" are gaining weight more rapidly, and are in better physical shape because they’re forced to do more than just rest at the bottom of their tank all day. We can only guess what will happen when we release them. Will they wait for each other as they’re released and travel together? Will they "keep in touch" or "hang out?" This could be the start of a whole new sea turtle paradigm - or not.

It looks good on paper

Our new hospital, that is. After a number of meetings with the architect, and lots of tweaking, the plan for our new hospital is ready to be put to a vote before our board of directors. By the time you read this we will have moved to the next step, submitting the site plan to the various Surf City entities for their approval. After that our engineers will work to secure the last of our permits, storm water runoff.  This year will be critical for fundraising. Although we’ve been squirreling away every cent we could for the past dozen years we’re still going to need help from everyone who loves our turtles and supports our mission. Look at what we’ve done in our little 850 square foot (of turtle space) garage: 200 turtles rehabilitated and released. Now just imagine what we can do once we move into the first-ever sea turtle hospital designed from the ground up, not retrofitted. We’ve given a lot of thought to the new facility, planning it so it will function and grow for many decades into the future. Watch this column for tidbits about our progress toward the groundbreaking.

Topsail Turtle Project Training Classes

May is creeping up on us, and those mama turtles are headed our way. The Topsail Turtle Project has scheduled four training sessions for volunteers interested in becoming part of the sea turtle nesting/hatching program on Topsail Island. Training dates are: Monday 4/20 at 1:00 PM; and Thursday 4/16 and Wednesday 4/22 at 6:30 PM. Location is the Surf City Community Center, off J.H. Batts Road. New volunteers need only attend ONE training session. Returning volunteers need not attend. For more information, contact Terry Meyer, Director of Beach Operations @ 910-470-2880.

Questions, comments or suggestions for stories
Contact me at: flippers@embarqmail.com.  This column will appear approximately every two weeks until June.