19-06-2025
Partnered with volunteer patrol, JU starts sea turtle program for students to learn hands-on
Jacksonville University is partnering with a St. Johns County sea turtle patrol to expand its marine science work to include hands-on research documenting some of Florida's signature protected species.
JU's new sea turtle program won't be an academic project but is designed to let students build direct experience collecting data and monitoring nests alongside volunteers who walk a 4.6-mile stretch of beach each dawn during turtles' nesting season.
'This is what real scientists do. … You go out and get sweaty, dirty,' collecting first-hand information using carefully designed protocols, said Lucas Meers, who has been lead coordinator for the Mickler's Landing Turtle Patrol since 2021.
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Six students had signed up before the university formally launched the program on June 16, which happened to be World Sea Turtle Day.
They'll partner with the volunteer patrol to monitor turtle activity between Sawgrass Beach Club and the northern edge of the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve, marking nests and checking for anomalies in the days before hatchlings emerge.
The Mickler's Landing patrol logs maybe 100 to 120 nests per year, fewer than the beach at Guana just to the south but more than are common at Jacksonville's Beaches. Northeast Florida counts are dwarfed, however, by the numbers on beaches between Volusia and Broward counties.
Statewide, about 110,000 loggerhead turtle nests were reported in 2024, as well as 14,000 for green turtles and 1,800 leatherbacks, who live their lives at sea or in estuaries except during nesting.
In the nesting season from April 15 to Oct. 31, patrol members meet on the beach 30 minutes before sunrise each day to check existing turtle nests and look for new ones.
The patrol is trained and permitted by Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to handle turtles when necessary, following state protocols, and to report information that researchers use to track changes in turtle populations and their interactions with people and wildlife on shore.
Students working with the patrol can earn course credits for independent study or internships, said Meers, who graduated JU with degrees in biology and marine science in 2011.
After jobs there, he found conservation roles at the Jacksonville Zoo and Botanical Gardens and at an organization to conserve the okapi, a small, endangered forest giraffe found in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Meers rejoined JU full-time in January, filling a role funded by an anonymous benefactor paying for the sea turtle program.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: JU starts sea turtle program for students to get hands-on experience
