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Seven species of sea turtles currently inhabit the World's oceans; all are threatened or endangered; four are found in the coastal waters of the Georgia Bight:

GaDNR Sea Turtle Intern and St. Catherines Wildlife Survival Center Veterinarian Intern observe a rare Leatherback Sea Turtle nesting on North Beach in 2005 [Nest 05-070].

Sea turtles exhibit adaptation to a totally marine existence, except for depositing their eggs on land. Legs are modified to flippers, heads and necks are no longer retractable, and salt glands allow excretion of salt from their systems. Of the four Georgia species, only loggerheads commonly nest on sandy shores of Georgia's barrier islands. Sea turtles evolved approximately 150 to 110 million years ago (Kear and Lee, 2006) during the latest Jurassic or early Cretaceous Period. During this time many species have been found in the seas at any given time. As time passed, many species of sea turtles evolved and adapted to the changing environment, and some species have become extinct. Confronted with the exploding population of humans and their ever increasing pollution, sea turtles have become threatened and endangered; not a new phenomenon for individual species throughout geologic time, but unique due to involvement of all sea turtles and due to their interactions with humans.

A loggerhead hatchling scampers across a heavy mineral sand deposit on a St. Catherines Island backbeach heading for its life in the sea. This turtle will live the rest of its life in the sea, except possibly returning in about 30 years to nest on St. Catherines or nearby Georgia barrier islands.

The Goals of the St. Catherines Sea Turtle Program are to:

• 1. Understand nesting ecology of loggerhead sea turtles on the Georgia Coast.
• 2. Enhance production of loggerhead hatchlings to build a sustainable population of sea turtles in the Southeast.
• 3. Use sea turtle conservation to teach conservation management to K-12 teachers, and through them to their students.
• 4. Transfer knowledge of modern sea turtle nests into ancient ecosystems by documenting sea turtle nests.

in order to:

• 5. Teach alternative methods of scientific inquiry, methods of scientific processing, documentation of observations, field triage, and critical thinking,
• 6. Provide teacher-interns the opportunity to acquire a suite of natural history classroom teaching materials, and
• 7. Build a Sea Turtle Learning Community to support conservation of Georgia's sea turtles.