Flight Training - April 2015 - 20

AROUND THE PATCH

By Heather Baldwin

MIGRATION PATTERN

HOW 20 GA PILOTS HELPED SAVE A SPECIES

PLUS The U.S. Coast Guard transports
85 sea turtles in this video.

DANIELLE BRENNAN (left) and her mother,
pilot Joan Evert.

ow do you get 500 sea turtles moved hundreds of miles down
the East Coast of the United States in a day? It sounds like the
set-up to some kind of corny zoological joke, but the question
was no laughing matter when the head of the Georgia Sea
Turtle Center posed it to Leslie Weinstein in November 2014. Fortunately, Weinstein had a ready answer: general aviation.
Frigid water and strong onshore winds
had caused massive numbers of hypothermic sea turtles to be washed onto the
beaches near Cape Cod. By mid-November, more than 1,000 turtles had been
stranded, many of them the Kemp's ridley,
the world's smallest and most critically
endangered marine turtle. Rehabilitation
facilities were overwhelmed and about
500 turtles had to be transported to facilities throughout the southeast. The catch:
They had to arrive in a day and be maintained at a 70-degree temperature.
Weinstein is a member of the development board of the University of
Florida's Archie Carr Center for Sea
Turtle Research and owner of True-Lock,
a company that makes specialized fasteners for aircraft. He has both a big heart for
sea turtles and a vast network of friends in
GA. With help from groups such as Pilots
N Paws and the National Association of
Flight Instructors, he spread the word

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that the sea turtles needed help. More
than 1,000 pilots contacted him to volunteer. Weinstein ultimately tapped about
20 to participate.
One of those pilots was Joan Evert,
a flight instructor from Panama City,
Florida. She saw the rescue as an ideal
opportunity to work with her daughter,
Danielle Brennan, a high school biology teacher and advocate for marine
life. "This was the perfect opportunity
for two professional women to combine
their areas of expertise," Evert said.
Evert and Brennan flew on December
15, the last day of the rescue flights. That
morning, a U.S. Coast Guard HC-144A
Ocean Sentry took off from Boston and
headed for Gulfport, Mississippi, with 85
turtles in banana boxes destined for three
separate facilities. Evert and Brennan
flew out of Northwest Florida Beaches
International Airport (ECP) in a Grumman American AA-5 they'd borrowed

from a friend to meet the Coast Guard
airplane. Evert's mission was to carry 13
of the reptiles back to ECP, where someone would drive them to Panama City's
Gulf World Marine Park.
The biggest challenge was keeping the
back of the airplane at 70 degrees, a level
that made it quite hot in the cockpit. Brennan used a digital thermometer to ensure
the temperature remained in range, and
one turtle enjoyed her attentiveness so
much that every time she reached back
to check the numbers, he poked his snout
out of his box to greet her.
"We left ECP in the morning with two
souls on board and returned in the afternoon with 15!" Evert marveled. "Having a
purpose like this made it a grand flight."
GA pilots helped to save an estimated
552 endangered sea turtles. In a species
where every turtle counts, that's huge.
Weinstein says it takes about 2,000 hatchlings to produce a breeding pair-and they
might not produce offspring for three
or four decades. "The mortality rate is
significant," he said. "The rescued turtles
were juveniles, about 5 years old. Had we
not been able to recover and recuperate
them, the impact on the sea turtle population would have been devastating."
In early January, the Coast Guard
released 19 rehabilitated turtles near the
North Carolina coast, including several
that were stranded in Massachusetts.
"Will there be another issue with the
sea turtles down the road? There very
well could be," Weinstein said. "The use of
GA is the answer."
Heather Baldwin is a Phoenix-based writer and
commercial pilot.

http://FLIGHTTRAINING.AOPA.ORG

Flight Training - April 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - April 2015