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Marine Turtle Newsletter 109:11, © 2005

Marine Turtle Newsletter-Online

North Carolina Sea Turtle Project Annual Meeting

Matthew H. Godfrey
NC Wildlife Resources Commission, 1507 Ann St. Beaufort, NC 28516 USA
(E-mail: godfreym@coastalnet.com)

On 4 April, 2005, nearly 70 participants in the North Carolina Sea Turtle Project attended the annual permit-holders meeting at the Visitor Center of Hammocks Beach State Park, in Swansboro, North Carolina, USA. The meeting was coordinated by Matthew Godfrey and Wendy Cluse of the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, the state agency that oversees the nesting and stranding networks in North Carolina.

In addition to general overviews and discussions of current sea turtle management practices in North Carolina, there were also several invited speakers, including: Jackie Orsulak and Millie Overman (NEST) who shared details about sea turtle conservation activities by NEST on the northern Outerbanks; Noella Gray (Duke University) who spoke about her research on volunteers in Costa Rica; Lisa Goshe (NMFS) who provided an update in research on assigning the age of sea turtles; Zoë Meletis (Duke University) who presented a talk on tourism and sea turtle conservation; David Nash (North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service) who described beach Vitex, an invasive plant species and requested help in identifying its occurrence on NC beaches; Doug Piatkowski (US Army Corps of Engineers) who presented an overview of dredging activities in NC and elsewhere in the SE USA; and Craig Harms (NCSU College of Veterinary Medicine) who provided details about an ongoing study to assess the health of wild juvenile loggerhead turtles found in North Carolina. The meeting ended with a necropsy demonstration, run by Craig Harms, on a small stranded Kemp’s ridley.