This page contains the interviews by Briana Brown and Jocelyn Hubbell of Dr. Jeff Schmid and Dr. Tony Tucker

Dr. Tony Tucker, Mote Marine Laboratory
Mote Marine Laboratory

How did you become interested in studying sea turtles?
Tony: As a young lad, I thought box turtles were really cool. I painted my name with fingernail polish on the back of a box turtle I found in my Mom’s garden. I let it go and a few months later it came back. I realized I could count the rings on its shell to determine its age and was amazed that it was older than my Dad. Although I was too young to fully appreciate how profound that was, I was also really smitten that turtles carry their house (shell) with them and live life in the slow lane. As I grow older, I appreciate the lessons turtles can teach us about living by the contrast between their lives and our human society which runs at an ever-increasing frenetic pace.

So turtles captured my imagination at an early age. When I got a chance to do sea turtle work in college, I thought it was a great opportunity and went with it.

As a child, did you know that you would go into biology? Or was there a person or event that inspired you to get involved?
Tony: I knew I would go into biology, or at least science because it’s all about answering questions and finding out the mysterious ways of animals. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but remained open to anything in line that path.

What did you study in college?
Tony: Biology major with an emphasis on marine biology and later decided to do more in zoology and ecology.

What science classes were most helpful for your current work?
Tony: Conservation biology, statistics, ecology, marine biology, herpetology, physiology

How long have you been researching sea turtles in Charlotte Harbor?
Tony: Since 2003.  I started working with sea turtles in 1979 at Ossabaw Island on the Georgia coast.  Since then, biology interests have taken me to study turtles in Florida, Puerto Rico, French Guiana, Costa Rica, Malaysia, and Australia".

What is the main goal of your study?
Tony: We are trying to identify important juvenile habitats for Kemp’s ridleys, loggerheads, and green turtles; because those turtles will be growing up and migrating elsewhere to live: ridleys migrating to nest in Mexico, greens possibly going back to Costa Rica or elsewhere in the Caribbean, and loggerheads probably in the southeastern US or perhaps the Yucatan or Cuba.

What is a typical research field day like?
Tony: Over coffee, we check the weather report because the wind direction can dictate where and when we’ll do field work on the water. We load the boat with nets, floats, a cooler of lunch items and leave early to set nets in areas that turtles are using. We spend a lot of time waiting patiently for turtles to tangle in the net, but it’s never boring because we see many sea birds and we’re always on guard for marine mammals: manatees and dolphins that might venture too close to the net. Rays and sharks also can get caught in the net and have to be removed carefully. When we finally catch turtles, it’s all worthwhile. A slow day on a boat always beats a good day in the office. But it’s important to catch up in the office by recording the data as soon as we return by plotting the day’s turtle locations to learn where critical habitat is located.

What are the most important tools / technology do you use to study the turtles?
Tony: GPS units to take accurate locations on turtles and depth sounders so we don’t run the boat aground. In the future we hope to use radio telemetry, radio tracking, and satellite tracking.

What are the dangers associated with your work with turtles?
Tony: Loggerheads and Kemp’s ridleys can bite, so we have to be cautious; sharks and stingrays caught in the nets; and, lightening from sudden thunderstorms in the afternoons. We also need to be aware of environmental dangers such as sunburn, hypothermia, dehydration, and sun glare.

How do scientists like you help sea turtle conservation efforts?
Tony: The thing that we do is try to make people aware of the bigger picture by explaining how the sea turtle world is affected by the human world, both on land and in the water. Something as simple as the food you eat can affect sea turtles. Trying to get a story across, I’m reminded of the Henry Beston quote:

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."
From: The Outermost House

And what Archie Carr (the father of sea turtle biology) said:

“Protection of sea turtles is not a parochial problem. They cannot be saved in any one place, or by controlling any one phase of the life cycle."
From: So Excellent a Fishe, page 230

What do you think is most threatening to sea turtle populations?
Tony: Humans who are apathetic or unaware of how they affect the natural world. For example, biologists have determined that 20% of Florida’s coastline is sea turtle unfriendly because of coastal armoring (sea walls, rock embankments). Of the habitat that remains, lighting problems in urban environments compound the problem of deterring turtles from beaches they could otherwise nest on. Light pollution also disorients hatchlings at emergence. Those are problems on land, yet turtles also face significant problems at sea where they spend the majority of their lives. Where problems can be identified, solutions can be found. Commercial fishing fleets have profound impacts on turtles, yet there are solutions that minimize accidental mortality such as TEDs (Turtle Excluder Devices) in shrimp nets and circle hooks on oceanic long-line fisheries. Marine debris and pollution also affect juvenile and adult turtles which mistake tar balls or plastic bags for either fish eggs or jellyfish. If ingested, these bits of plastic trash can have fatal consequences.

What has been your most inspiring or favorite experience studying the turtles?
Tony: It’s no different for the first turtle, or the hundredth, or the thousandth turtle you see because the spectacle of watching a female complete a nest is profoundly moving; recognizing that she is completing a ritual older than the dinosaurs. You cannot help but empathize with the female’s labored breathing and tears on her face, even though you can rationalize biologically that these are visible manifestations of her physiology. Emotionally they establish sympathy for an individual turtle that can link to broader concerns about the larger sphere of their population dynamics in time and space.

What personal qualities or attributes make a person a good scientist?
Tony: Patience, perseverance, attention to detail, responsibility, common sense, a good sense of humor, imaginative problem solving, critical thinking, some measure of practical skills and the ability to combine practical skills with specialist knowledge, resourcefulness, recognition that the fringe benefits of your chosen field include being paid with experiences not financial gain, wanting to share what’s cool or neat about the animals, understanding how your animal links you to the world… how they lend you a new perspective on the world.

What can people do to help the sea turtles?
Tony: You can turn your lights off at night if you are living on the beach, try to preserve natural beaches—don’t build a seawall or other impediments to the natural and dynamic movements of beaches. Be aware that swordfish longline fisheries impact turtles and urge the use of circle hooks. Recognize that highly migratory species such as marine turtles, regularly cross international boundaries, so the responsibility is shared by many nations to ensure their future.

What three or four books do you recommend for people who are interested in sea turtles?

For conservation and biology overview:
Jim Spotila’s Sea Turtles: A Complete Guide to Their Biology, Behavior, and Conservation
Archie Carr’s So Excellent a Fishe and Windward Road

For technical biology:
The Biology of Sea Turtles: Volumes I and II.

For online research:
sea turtle bibliography and seaturtle.org

Video & DVD:
Ancient Mariners
Journey of the Loggerhead

Dr. Jeff Schmid, The Conservancy of Southwest Florida

The Conservancy for Southwest Florida, Kemp's ridley research

Immature Sea Turtles of West Florida

How did you become interested in studying sea turtles?
Jeff: I worked as a dock hand at a yacht club during college until my mother, who worked at a physicians office, got to talking to a fisheries biologist who was there for a check-up. She was bragging about her son who had just graduated and the biologist suggested to her that I apply for a position at the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) lab down the street. Before his exam was complete at the office, I had gone to the lab and filled out an application. This is how I began working with Larry Ogren, who was to become my mentor (For those who have read “So Excellent a Fishe” by Archie Carr, Larry Ogren was Archie's staunch assistant at Tortuguero, Costa Rica.). Larry started up an in-water sea turtle survey in Cedar Key in 1986; at the time there was only one other in-water survey in Florida being conducted by the University of South Florida. During the Cedar Keys project, Larry contracted a couple of the local, old-time turtle fishermen, bought their now illegal turtle nets (turtle fishing is illegal under the Endangered Species Act of 1973), and learned from them where and how to catch the turtles. After one or two years with the project I was hooked. Prior to that, an experience that peaked my interest in sea turtles was when I was surfing off Force Pierce Inlet and a loggerhead surfaced next to me as I was sitting in the line-up. It must have been a nesting female waiting to come ashore to nest.

What did you study in college?
Jeff: I attended Florida Institute of Technology as an undergraduate and studied environmental technology with a specialty in aquaculture. After three years with the NMFS Lab in Panama City, Larry Ogren talked me into going to graduate school. I got a M.S. degree at the University of South Alabama, Mobile, in biological sciences with an emphasis on marine biology. I was able to take classes during the winter and work summers back at the Cedar Key project. For my thesis, I compared populations of ladyfish in the northern Gulf of Mexico to the southern Caribbean to see if they were two separate species. I was able to travel to Venezuela through this study, and my advice to students is to pick a study animal in which you can enjoy the tropics.

I received my Ph.D. from the University of Florida, Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation and worked with Drs. Alan Bolten and Karen Bjorndal at the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research (http://accstr.ufl.edu/). My dissertation involved using radio and sonic telemetry to track the movements of turtles and benthic (i.e., bottom) mapping to investigate the habitat associations of immature Kemp's ridley turtles in the Cedar Keys. I spent two years tracking turtles and one year mapping bottom habitat by grab samples, covering 48 square km (4800 sample sites!). This study provided the first evidence that live bottom (marine invertebrates like sponges, sea squirts, and sea whips that are attached to the seafloor) was an important feeding habitat for immature Kemp's ridleys.

How long have you been researching sea turtles in Charlotte Harbor?
Jeff: I have been working with Dr. Tucker at Mote Marine lab for the past year. However, I’ve been studying turtles in west Florida waters for about 19 years. As mentioned earlier, I started off with a tagging and then telemetry study in the Cedar Keys from 1986 to 1996. In 1997, I began working with Wayne Witzell at the NMFS Miami lab and we started an in-water study in the Ten Thousand Islands south of Naples (www.sefsc.noaa.gov/immature_seaturtles.jsp). I began working for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida in 2001and our turtle tagging efforts were shifted to a telemetry and habitat characterization study of Kemp's ridleys (www.conservancy.org/sp_tur_kemp.htm). This study also identified live bottom as essential habitat for immature Kemp's ridley turtles in the Ten Thousand Islands. It will be interesting to see if Kemp's ridleys in Charlotte Harbor exhibit a similar preference for these live bottom areas.

What is the main goal of your study?
Jeff: In-water studies of sea turtles are a two-tiered approach: the first step is to capture and tag turtles to determine their areas of aggregation and gather basic demographic information like life stages via size classes, sex ratios, growth rates, and whether they are resident or transient animals; the second step is to identify their habitat associations and this involves telemetry and bottom mapping. A crucial objective in this research is to find out what areas and what particular habitats are essential for the growth and survival of the immature Kemp's ridley turtles. Conservation efforts can then focus on protecting these areas and habitats to ensure the viability of the species.

What is a typical research field day like?
Jeff: That question reminds me of a quote by Frederick W. True from 1887 in which he said, “This [turtle netting] is said to be the dullest of all fishing, and unending patience and considerable skill are required to make it successful.” It also reminds me of the theory of punctuated equilibrium - long stasis with little or no change then some sort of novel development that leads to an explosion of speciation. Our days are filled with long hours of waiting for some sign, like a turtle surfacing to breath, followed by bursts of frenetic activity due to turtles, sharks, or stingrays in the net.

What are the most important tools / technology do you use to study the turtles?
Jeff: We are slaves to the computer. A lot of tools and technology we borrow from other disciplines. For example, our calipers to measure turtles are forestry calipers and the turtle flipper tags are cow ear tags used by the cattle industry. One of the cutting edge tools being used is Geographic Information System (GIS) software, which is a mapping tool with database capabilities. You can assign data to geographic points on the map that can be accessed or queried by a click of a button. This technology was vital to my investigations of habitat use by Kemp's ridleys. There is also the tracking of turtles, the radio, sonic, and satellite transmitters we put on turtles to follow their movements and migrations.

What are the dangers associated with your work with turtles?
Jeff: Lightning, stingray barbs, shark teeth, turtle beaks...

How do scientists like you help sea turtle conservation efforts?
Jeff: We provide the information necessary for management of the wild populations. Sound management of these threatened and endangered species is dependent on good scientific data. Much of the information available for turtles is on nesting females, the most accessible part of the long sea turtle life cycle. Until recently, very little was known about the immature turtles that inhabit our coastal waters. In-water studies provide missing pieces to the puzzle. Any changes to sea turtle populations will be seen in the aggregations of immature turtles, long before chnge becomes apparent in the nesting population. By then, it may be too late.

What do you think is most threatening to sea turtle populations?
Jeff: Humans are the biggest threat. Some of our impacts are pollution of the ocean, coastal development of nesting beaches, after-the-fact regulation of the commercial fishing industry, and marine recreation such as the power boats that race full speed through the water without regard for the turtles. About one percent of the Kemp's ridleys that were captured in the Cedar Keys and the Ten Thousand Islands had wounds from boat propellers. These were the animals that survived the collision and many more probably perished without being noticed. Recreational hook and line fishing impacts the turtles too. Loggerheads and ridley’s will take bait from a fishing hook, and may become habitual bait stealers.

What has been your most inspiring or favorite experience studying the turtles?
Jeff: Not so much a moment in time, but the experience of working with the old Cedar Key turtle fishermen, the guys that used to fish commercially. A lot of the information we published was anecdotal information hidden in their stories of the old days: when and where the turtles are, how many used to be out there, and the daily activities of turtles in the coastal waters. They told me the turtles moved in and out with the tides and to set the nets in such a way as to take advantage of these movements to capture turtles. We studied this information scientifically and found that turtles do indeed orient their movements with tidal flow. These fishermen may have only had a grade school education, but they know a lot about the marine environment. These guys spent their whole lives on the water and their observations were a wealth of untapped information. They have since passed away and much of that information is now lost.

What personal qualities or attributes make a person a good turtle biologist?
Jeff: A love of the outdoors is certainly necessary. If you are studying nesting turtles you have to be out on the beach at night swatting mosquitoes. If you are studying turtles out on the water you have to be a competent boater and sometimes a mechanic. You have to be aware of the surrounding environment, and it helps to know meteorology (recognizing when the weather is going to turn bad). You have to have a combination of book smarts and practicality. You have to be very observant, patient, and persistent. A good sense of humor does not hurt. You also have to be personable and be able to communicate with people at different levels.

What can people do to help the sea turtles?
Jeff: People living along the coast are the ones directly affecting turtles. They should turn out condo lights or use turtle friendly lights. Don’t throw your plastics overboard as turtles will eat them. Just be mindful that you are in someone else’s home – sea turtles, manatees, rays – and you should respect their way of life. We need to understand that the biggest impact on these animals is human activities. Understand that our daily routines and activities have an impact on turtles. They were here before we started populating these beaches, before we started building our houses and condos, so it their home we are living in.

What three or four books do you recommend for people who are interested in sea turtles?
Jeff: I’m going to be rather biased and deficient because I don’t read general books, mostly technical and research papers. I would recommend Dr. Archie Carr’s So Excellent a Fishe and Windward Road. He is an excellent writer and is able to communicate the plight of sea turtles at a more general level.