Archives
On Earth Day, April 22, 2018, as part of our upcoming Blue Table Initiative, Loggerhead Marinelife Center has partnered with local restaurants and The City of West Palm Beach Mayor’s Office of Sustainability to go #StrawFreewithLMC For this event, the restaurants listed have agreed to refrain from offering plastic straws to their patrons on Earth Day, Sunday, April 22, 2018, to help increase public awareness of the need to eliminate single-use plastics, such as straws. In… Read More
Fishing piers are home to an elevated number of interactions between sea turtles and recreational anglers. To mitigate the effects of incidental capture and entanglements, in 2013 we implemented the Responsible Pier Initiative (RPI) on the Juno Beach Pier. The Initiative is designed to work collaboratively with anglers and provide them with the tools and training necessary to respond appropriately in the event a sea turtle becomes accidentally hooked or entangled on a… Read More
Last week we headed to the Caribbean to implement the Cigarette Litter Prevention Program (CLPP) across the main island of Puerto Rico and on the island of Vieques. We worked with our Responsible Pier Initiative partners at Black Beard Sports and Ticatove to install cigarette ash receptacles, reinstall Sea Turtle Safe Project SHIELD signs at popular dive spots and even made time for an underwater cleanup. Trip highlights are below. Day 1:… Read More
Loggerhead Marinelife Center receives Cigarette Litter Prevention Program Grant from Keep America Beautiful National Keep America Beautiful Initiative reports 60 percent reduction of cigarette litter in participating communities during 2016 Juno Beach, Florida – Keep America Beautiful, the national nonprofit that envisions a country in which every community is a clean, green and beautiful place to live, recently announced that Loggerhead Marinelife Center will receive a 2017 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program (CLPP)… Read More
If you’ve gone shopping for accessories such as sunglasses or hair clips in the last 40 years, you are probably familiar with the ‘tortoiseshell’ pattern – mottled black and brown markings. The original tortoiseshell products were made from the shells of hawksbill sea turtles. Poaching and commercial exploitation of the turtles were among the most significant factors in the decline of the hawksbill population. Hawksbills, named for their ‘raptor-like’ beak,… Read More
Last week, I joined Ocean Conservancy (OC) in Hong Kong for their International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting. The global event, hosted by The Hong Kong Cleanup and Ecozine, was held to bring ICC leaders and coordinators together to achieve the following goals: Celebrate 30 years of cleanups Share best practices from around the region Inspire greater coordination and communication between the regional network of cleanup partners Highlight innovative projects within the network… Read More
On Sunday, Tommy and I began our journey to Lima, Peru to present the Responsible Pier Initiative and Project Shield at the 36th Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation. On our way, we stopped in Puerto Rico to install signage in two new locations. The first, a fishing pier in Old San Juan, is located in a tourism destination that attracts millions of visitors each year. Thanks to our collaborators… Read More
This past week I had the opportunity to spend some time in Zakynthos, Greece, working with the local NGO, Earth, Sea & Sky. Earth, Sea and Sky was established in Zakynthos, Greece in 1993 by Yannis Vardakastanis. Yannis grew up on Zakynthos and became a full-time conservationist in 1991 after witnessing a significant change in the local marine ecosystems and sea turtle nesting behavior on the island, inspiring him to take action…. Read More
Conservation 