Inaugural Southeast Regional Sea Turtle Meeting

Inaugural Southeast Regional Sea Turtle Meeting scheduled for February 1-4, 2012
JEKYLL ISLAND, GEORGIA--The Southeast Regional Sea Turtle Network (SERSTN) today announced a historic and groundbreaking meeting of sea turtle scientists, conservationists and volunteer citizen scientists that will be held on Jekyll Island, Georgia, February 1-4, 2012. The southeast region’s two thousand mile coastline is a critical foraging and nesting ground for Kemp's Ridley, Loggerhead, Green, Leatherback, and Hawksbill sea turtles, all of which are either threatened or endangered. According to scientists’ estimates, sea turtles lay between 68,000 and 90,000 nests in the southeast region a year. Because only an estimated one sea turtle hatchling out of 1,000 to 10,000 lives to maturity, this region’s nesting grounds are vital to the species’ survival.
According to SERSTN president, Kim Sonderman, “The year 2010 proved to be a challenging year for our turtles. A massive cold-stunning event in Florida was very quickly followed by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The consequences from both of these events might be felt for years to come and spurred us even more to create a meeting where research scientists, students, conservationists, volunteers and sea turtle enthusiasts could disseminate research to colleagues and identify future research needs.”
This meeting provides an opportunity for the regional sea turtle community to come together to network and learn about the research and conservation activities that are taking place in their own backyard. Debbie Sobel, President of the Sea Turtle Conservation League of Singer Island, Palm Beach County, Florida, agrees wholeheartedly, “It is so important for volunteers to be kept abreast of all the new research data, so that we can educate the public while doing our nesting surveys on the beach every summer. Many volunteers have helped scientists collect samples or review nesting results for their scientific papers. It will be nice for the volunteers to hear the presentations that these scientists will be giving, and it will also be nice for volunteers to actually meet many of the turtle people they have heard of for so many years.”
The meeting will bring together researchers and volunteer citizen scientists from Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. Those interested in attending are invited to visit SERSTN at http://iconferences.seaturtle.org/serstm/ as well as their Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Southeast-Regional-Sea-Turtle- Meeting/200005523366056.