April 2012

This Saturday, April 28th, is the 8th Annual Tybee Turtle Trot! The Tybee community looks forward to this 5K beach run every year! This amazing race is an annual event to raise funds for the Tybee Sea Turtle Project and is the kick off to Coastal Georgia’s sea turtle nesting season.

Georgia’s sea turtle season runs from May through October, and we do our best here on Tybee to make sure our sea turtles have the best nesting season ever! Sea Turtle Project Volunteers participate in daily dawn patrols to check for nests laid during the night. When a nest is found, the site is evaluated and any nests below the high tide line are carefully relocated. The nests are protected my marking them off, and daily monitoring. Its truly an amazing sight to discover a nest, and even more exciting to see the nest reach it’s boil, when the newly hatched sea turtles emerge from the nest and strike out toward the ocean! If you can’t make it to Tybee during sea turtle season, make sure to follow the Tybee Sea Turtle Project on Facebook!

It is so important to do everything we can to help sea turtles have their best chance at life! That’s just one reason we are avid supporters of the Tybee Turtle Trot! Help us help the sea turtles and join us this Saturday at the race! You can register online or even download a form on the race site. It is a $25 registration fee, or just $20 for members of the Tybee Island Marine Science Center. Register before April 24th for your free tee shirt! Sign in starts at 7:00 a.m.and the race begins at 8:00 a.m. Just come and watch if running isn’t your thing, because there will also be a sea turtle release by the Georgia Sea Turtle Center around 9:30 a.m., all right in front of the Marine Science Center! We hope to see you there. Join us and get your trot on!