Gulf Coast rescuers are hatching a daring plan to save as many as 70,000 sea turtle eggs from the fouled water along Florida’s Panhandle.
Each year, thousands of newly hatched sea turtles instinctively scramble toward the water from their nests in sandy beaches. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is determined that this year’s hatchlings won’t be among the Gulf casualties.
In a couple of weeks, biologists plan to relocate all the nests from the Gulf Coast to Florida’s eastern coast, digging up an estimated 700 to 800 nests, containing up to 70,000 eggs, placing them in foam containers and shipping them overland — in FedEx trucks — to Florida’s far side.
They’ll be allowed to complete their incubation, and hopefully the turtles will emerge, to be released into the ocean.
(READ or LISTEN to the story from NPR’s Weekend Edition)
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So glad the sea turtle eggs will have a new home. Hope they hatch ok in their new place on Atlantic Ocean beaches.
This is really a wonderful effort and bravo for FEDEX for taking this on…..I can see procession of trucks in my mind and am so glad to see this innovative effort happen! I hope they are doing this as a means of giving back to the community. What a great example this could be of “mobilizing local resources”.