See the article below to hear about a leatherback sea turtle that was entangled in a crap pot snare. Thankfully, a group of Charleston fisherman found the turtle and was able to free him/her. It is sad that this turtle had to go through this but I am so thankful that they were there to help!

I hope you all enjoyed Earth Day! I created a video but didn't get it uploaded until today as I spent the weekend away from WIFI. I had a great weekend in nature and exploring another piece of South Carolina.

I hope you enjoy the video! You should subscribe if you are not already so you do not miss any future videos.

Our migrating leatherback sea turtles are back in our South Carolina waters! I have seen several popping up for air off the coast of our Edisto beaches. I have been getting a lot of questions at our nature center about the jellyfish washing up as well. The picture below is a cannonball jellyfish, a favourite food item of the leatherback sea turtles. 

The next time you are at the beach take a look to see if you can spot one of the sea turtles popping up for air - if you are lucky you may see it's enormous shell as well! The leatherback sea turtles can reach a length of 7 ft. and weigh over 2000 lbs. They are the largest sea turtle species and as you may have guessed they have a leathery-type shell. They do not have a hard shell like the other sea turtle species. This is because they dive really deep in the ocean and their leathery shell is able to deal with the pressure changes.

I saw my first nesting leatherback when I went to Trinidad. It was such an amazing sight! One of the turtles we saw was tagged in Canada. The leatherbacks will migrate all the way up to Halifax, Nova Scotia. There is a sea turtle program in Halifax that tags the sea turtles out in the ocean - I may need to go and check this out sometime!

The leatherbacks we are seeing off the coast are on their northward migration!

How cool is that?!

It is National Volunteer Week (April 15-21) and I wanted to take the time to send a huge thanks to all of the amazing volunteers on our EBSP turtle patrol team. They wake up at early hours or stay up walking the beach late at night. They pick up trash, deal with some stinky turtle nests and of course those biting noseems. They always have positive spirits though and that is what makes them so amazing! I could not do the work I do without you!

Here is a slideshow of some of our volunteers hard at work during turtle patrol:

Miss Murtle and I went to Trindad to attend the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Network (WIDECAST) conference. We had such a great time exploring Trinidad, meeting so many inspiring individuals and seeing our first nesting leatherback sea turtles. Murtle made a video of her travels, check out the video below! Be sure to like the video and subscribe to her channel so you don't miss her future adventures!