The sea turtle transport and release was a success!

All the turtles did very well on the ride to Georgia. We stopped several times to do health checks and spritz them down with salt water. The drive took about 20 hours and went as well as we could have expected. Dr. Terry Norton and his staff at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center (GSTC) on Jekyll Island were ready and waiting for us when we arrived. First we situated Route into his new tank for additional rehabilitation (I'll blog more on this soon) and then we headed to the beach with the others (at right).

The Staff at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center secured a release zone down at the beach so we could organize the animals and allow the public to watch from a safe distance.


Bruce and Godzilla (loggerhead sea turtles) were released first. They are both quite large and we wanted to give them plenty of room. Both lumbered down the beach toward the water. Bruce stopped at one point and started heading lateral to the water. Dr. Norton re-oriented him and off he went into the deep blue.

We released all the Kemp's ridley and green sea turtles at the same time and watched them crawl down to the water. It was truly exciting to see the turtles that came into the NEAq debilitated and in some cases barely alive last fall now racing back to the water!

- Connie