January 28, 2020

What an awesome place! John and I spent the whole day there learning, exploring and just watching these beautiful creatures. What started out as one woman trying to help a species has turned into a major force in the education, rehabilitation and conservation of sea turtles https://Seaturtleinc.org

Brisket and His Buddy at the “Salad Bar”

Caption: Brisket on Salad Bar Cleanup

What an awesome place! John and I spent the whole day there learning, exploring and just watching these beautiful creatures. What started out as one woman trying to help a species has turned into a major force in the education, rehabilitation and conservation of sea turtles https://Seaturtleinc.org

Ila Loetscher (The turtle lady of South Padre Island) founded Sea Turtle Inc. in 1977 but she had started caring for turtles long before that. There is an excellent video on their “About” page that gives a little of the then, now and the hope for the future: https://youtu.be/T1p8CWJEKmk

Caption: New Patient

Sea Turtle Inc. is expanding. Their hospital is the first building you enter. It is mostly open sided with large tanks filled with convalescing sea turtles. Over the course of the day we went back and forth into the hospital building so we were able to get a tour and interpretive talk from one of their volunteers, watch them being fed from their custom made “salad bars” and saw a new intake getting checked over in the medical room.

After the hospital building, you follow their boardwalks across to their new education building. This is where the resident turtles can be seen. If you are there in the morning you might be able to catch their feeding. Several of these turtles are renowned; Jerry for being with Ila since he was a hatchling and Allison for having the first successful sea turtle prosthetic. Each of their tanks gives their name, age, weight AND preferred foods. There are huge windows on the resident tanks so the turtles can see you and you can see them.

Also in the new building is an amphitheater where yet another volunteer gave a very informative presentation on sea turtles and answered questions. After we had absorbed all that we could in the resident area we hit the little museum area and gift shop. They have some beautiful sea turtle gifts, clothing and jewelry.

We paid for several “adoptions” for our granddaughter, Chloe. The first was a turtle named “Brisket” (pictured above). The second was to adopt a turtle nest which she named “Chloe’s Cavern.” Sea Turtle Inc. sent adoption certificates and some turtle gift goodies for Chloe to actually have and hold. They later sent updates on the nest with the following pics:

Turtle Mom

Once mom laid her eggs, she headed back out into the Gulf of Mexico. But the staff of Sea Turtle, Inc. moved the eggs and sand to a safety “corral” (where Chloe’s nest was labeled with her chosen name) and kept an eye on the eggs until they hatched. Here is the happy family just before they were released onto the sand to scurry into the waves lapping against the shore of South Padre Island.

Hatchlings from Chloe’s Cavern

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