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The Seventh Annual Meeting of Latin American Sea Turtle Specialists was held at Camp Challenge, Florida, 25-28 February, and was organized by Hedelvy Guada, Lesbia Montero, and Hector Horta.
There was a one-day special session on the Biology of the Loggerhead Sea Turtle. The session brought together invited experts on loggerhead biology and status and will result in a book entitled “Ecology and Conservation of the Loggerhead Sea Turtle,” to be edited by session organizers, Alan Bolten and Blair Witherington.
In addition to the loggerhead session, there were more than 300 oral and poster presentations in sessions that included conservation and management, public education, developmental habitat, conservation genetics, movements and activity, human use of sea turtles, diseases and parasites, habitat assessment, feeding and growth, mortality, reproductive physiology and behavior, anatomy and physiology, national and international legislation, and nesting surveys. The extensive program was assembled by Anne Meylan and Allen Foley. Kristin Fick and Tony Redlow organized the poster presentations.
There were workshops held on the physical monitoring of beach nourishment sites, sea turtle anatomy, nest predation mitigation, light management on nesting beaches, Florida sea turtle permit-holder issues, and population modeling (both basic and advanced), in addition to a colloquium on the taxonomic status of the black turtle. Reports from many of these events will be presented in the MTN/NTM.
A keynote presentation was given by Archie Carr III on “The Century of the Sea Turtle” and a special presentation was made by the Chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Julie Morris, on “Challenges of Conserving Florida’s Wildlife.”
The Friday-night banquet featured a retrospective on sea turtle biology and conservation and on the ontogeny of the Symposium. Peter Pritchard reminisced insightfully on the early years when pivotal events were occurring and when only a handful of people worked to understand and conserve sea turtles, and Lew Ehrhart presented a delightful and detailed 20-year walk down Workshop/Symposium memory lane. Also at the banquet, Anders Rhodin presented the Archie Carr Best Student Presentation Awards, co-sponsored jointly by the Sea Turtle Symposium and Chelonian Research Foundation. Winners chosen by the Student Awards Committee from a field of 90 student presentations were: Best Biology Paper, Jeffrey Seminoff (Wildlife and Fisheries Science, University of Arizona); Runner Up Biology Paper, Melissa Snover (Duke University Marine Laboratory); Runner Up Biology Paper, Barbara Bell (Dept. of Bioscience, Drexel University); Best Biology Poster, Patricia Sposata (Dept. of Biology, Florida Atlantic University); Runner Up Biology Poster, Dana L. Drake (Dept. of Bioscience, Drexel University); Best Conservation Paper, Lori Lucas (Florida Institute of Technology); Best Conservation Poster, William Irwin (Dept. of Biology, University of North Carolina); and Runner Up Conservation Poster, John Wang (Dept. of Biology, University of North Carolina).
As in other years there were productive meetings of WIDECAST (organized by Karen Eckert) and of the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialists Group (organized by Alberto Abreu Grobois and Marydele Donnelly).
A field trip to the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge allowed more than 100 people to visit the nesting beach, tour the maritime hammock, and observe the tangle-netting techniques of Lew Ehrhart (who caught five turtles the morning after delivering a late-night banquet address three hours away). The trip was organized by Paul Tritaik and Blair Witherington.
The Symposium plenary session was well attended. At the session, 10 resolutions that dealt with issues of sea turtle conservation and that had benefited from the facilitating prowess of Jack Frazier each passed by a majority vote of the Symposium body. The resolutions are being translated for submission to the appropriate international offices and organizations and appear in this issue (Epperly & Frazier 2000 MTN 88:20-26). Symposium members also voted on slates of nominees for Symposium offices. Members choose Robert van Dam, Stephanie Presti, and Alexis Suarez as the Nominations Committee, Peter Dutton and Hiroyuki Suganuma as incoming Board members, Ed Drane as Treasurer, Sheryan Epperly as Secretary, and Earl Possardt as President (for the 2002 Symposium).
A Saturday-night social event was held at the Chelonian Research Institute and was hosted by Peter Pritchard. Socializers experienced an outstanding display of chelonian diversity and bibliography presented in an eclectic old-world style.
As is past years, the Symposium ran amazingly well on generous grants, borrowed equipment, volunteers, and an overall spirit of altruism that is surely uncommon to endeavors of this kind. I feel that it is important to summarize this support here, both to acknowledge the sources and to describe how the Symposium comes to be. As many may know, the cost to Symposium attendees is kept as low as possible in order to attract a broad and diverse attendance. Here is how we do it:
Travel to the Symposium for many participants was funded by generous grants from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and from the National Marine Fisheries Service, Office of Protected Resources. Special thanks go to Jack Frazier and Barbara Schroeder for fund-raising efforts and to J. Nichols and the travel committee for strategically disbursing the funding. Details can be found in this issue (Nicholls 2000 MTN 88:16). In addition to receiving airline tickets, many needy travelers were also able to stay in complementary (albeit crowded) rooms thanks to Symposium funding, individual room sponsors, a find-a-roommate system, and a spacious Presidential Suite (which we found to sleep approximately 16 people).
Simultaneous translation (English-Spanish, and for three presentations, French to English & Spanish) was an important, and expensive, facet of the Symposium. Translation expense was offset in part by grants from the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund and from Boeing Corporation.
Symposium sustenance was subsidized as well by a generous poster-lunch donation from the Brevard County Sea Turtle Preservation Society and by coffee-break donations from Service Argos, Ripley Entertainment, Florida Power and Light Company, Ecological Associates, D.B. Ecological Services, Caribbean Conservation Corporation, Turtle Time, and Disney’s Living Seas Aquarium. The audio/visual and computer requirements for the Symposium were heavily subsidized by equipment procured by begging, totaling approximately $16,380 in rental value.
But the greatest support for the Symposium was surely the people who focused their expertise and hard work on the task. I am able only to acknowledge the work needed to prepare for the Symposium. With their contributions estimated in person-hours, some of the more critical pre-Symposium tasks and contributors were: web-site, Michael Coyne (520 hrs), registration, Chris Koeppel (760 hrs), volunteer coordination, Richard Byles (200 hrs), program assembly, Anne Meylan and Allen Foley (500 hrs), poster preparation, Kristin Fick and Tony Redlow (230 hrs), document translations, Jaime Peña (80 hrs), audio/visual preparation, Andrea Mosier and Peter Bennett (290 hrs), artwork, Dawn Witherington (150 hrs), transportation, Beth Morford (100 hrs), travel assistance, J. Nichols and the travel committee (675 hrs), Secretary, Sherry Epperly (150 hrs), and President, Blair Witherington (600-800 hrs). [Please note missing data for the important tasks of Treasurer, Ed Drane; beseechment, Sue Ellen Smith; entertainment organization, Dean Bagley; and “thing” arrangement, Barbara Schroeder.] And during the Symposium the altruistic work continued, with the auction (Jen Homcy and Rod Mast, who tickled well over $11,000 for international travel out of the audience), with vendor arrangements (Tom McFarland), and with a host of other important tasks that were deftly handled by over 100 volunteers.
It was a greatly rewarding experience to preside over this Symposium. My hope is that the rest of the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, elected officers, and all Symposium participants are as delighted as I am with the quality of presentations and the productivity of communication, and that they share my pride in the heroic efforts that brought the Symposium to this fruition.