Loggerhead Sea Turtles

As part of a collaboration with North Carolina Aquariums, the VLM raises juvenile loggerhead sea turtles that have been collected as hatchlings, until the turtles are ready for release. Their state-wide conservation program (http://www.ncaquariums.com/conservationresearch/sea-turtle-conservation) helps many sea turtles yearly and is an excellent educational tool for the people of North Carolina and our visitors. Some of the released turtles are tagged and can be tracked on http://www.seaturtle.org/ .This site provides free sea turtle tracking data around the world and you can even adopt animals that have been rescued and/or rehabilitated, as I did for our aquarium department for Christmas. Our previous turtle “Virginia”, released in the fall of 2010, was tracked heading northward 213 Kilometers in less than a week!

(http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/index.shtml?tag_id=94983)

Our current turtle went on exhibit a few weeks ago and is still adjusting to life with many large fishes, at some point it too will be returned to NC and released back into the wild.