Gumbo Limbo Nature Center Sea Turtle Tracking

A project of Gumbo Limbo Nature Center Sea Turtle Research in conjunction with the partners and sponsors detailed below.

Subscribe to receive daily project updates

Click on an animal's name for maps and more information.

Introduction

Gumbo Limbo Nature Center is an environmental learning center nestled on a barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway in Boca Raton, Florida. Twenty acres of Boca Raton's Red Reef Park have been reserved for the nature center. Gumbo Limbo offers indoor and outdoor classrooms, a butterfly garden, a 40-foot high observation tower, an elevated boardwalk through coastal hammock and mangrove communities, and four outdoor seawater tanks containing sharks, stingrays, and sea turtles. The Center offers a variety of nature programs that appeal to all ages such as popular nighttime Turtle Walk Program where you may see a turtle lay her eggs on the beach, and an evening Hatchling Release Program, where baby sea turtles are released into the ocean. Reservations are required for all programs.

Gumbo Limbo is home-base to the Boca Raton Sea Turtle Conservation and Research Program which monitors all five miles of Boca’s beaches for sea turtle activity from March 1 to October 31. The Program is active in controlling beachfront lighting and has a successful program of deterring mammalian predators from nests with hot pepper powder. The Program staff are responsible for the care of the sea turtles and fish in the seawater tanks at Gumbo Limbo. This is the Program’s first use of satellite tagging to track its sea turtles and we look forward to integrating this technology with other research projects in the future.

Project Partners

Dr. Jeanette Wyneken, Florida Atlantic University; Dr. Kate Mansfield, University of Miami, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science

Project Sponsors

This project was made possible by the generous support of private individuals. Thank you!