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Turtle Power

Florida FFA member protects endangered species

Turtle Power

Besides taking advantage of the beautiful views at canaveral national seashore, alonda patrols the beach to keep a close watch on sea turtles.



March 2008

Chances are, you’ve never seen a sea turtle up close and personal. You’ve probably never watched a giant mother-to-be paddle her way out of the ocean and up onto the beach, dig a nest in the ground, and lay her eggs. And you’ve almost certainly never witnessed the baby hatchlings emerge, miraculously, after days of struggle, from beneath the sand. Well, here’s a bit of advice from one person who has: You should.

“It’s amazing,” says Alonda McCarty, a recent graduate of New Smyrna Beach High School in Florida and a seasonal employee at nearby Canaveral National Seashore, where endangered sea turtles are the main attraction. “Whether you walk out there on the beach one night and just see it once, or you go a thousand times, each time it’s different. Each time it’s special. The first time I saw a sea turtle, I fell in love with it.”

An Eye-Opening Experience
The first time Alonda saw a sea turtle was her freshman year in high school. She’d just moved to coastal Florida from Kentucky, where her family owned a cattle ranch.

“I went from this big farm to this tiny island,” she says. “It was so different.”

Alonda joined the local FFA chapter, where she quickly discovered she had a lot to learn about modern agriculture.

“To me, FFA was cows and horses and things like that,” she says. “Actually, joining FFA opened up a whole new world for me – to see that there was so much more to it, from endangered species to the fishing industry. We even had a clam nursery at school where we raised baby clams.”

Eager to get her feet wet, Alonda began volunteering at Canaveral, which is operated by the National Park Service. Before long she was asked to help out with the sea turtle program. She jumped at the chance.

“We’d take a group of 30 people out four nights a week and show them where the turtles lay their eggs,” she explains. “I learned more and more about it and eventually got really involved. Sea turtles just became a really big part of my life.”

So big, in fact, that Alonda has returned to Canaveral year after year, spending the better part of each turtle season helping park rangers, leading educational programs and, occasionally, rescuing stranded turtles.

When it was time to start her supervised agricultural experience program, she decided to build it around the conservation of sea turtles and their habitat. She even won a national FFA proficiency award for her work.

The thing about sea turtles, Alonda says, is that they’re in trouble. Development pressure, pollution, global warming and a number of other threats have led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list all but one species of sea turtle as endangered. Her new summer position at the park is to direct an environmental education program for kids.

“The more you educate young people, the more they want to help,” Alonda says. “They come out and see the turtles for the first time, and they’re hooked.”

A Future in Conservation
Last summer, at the end of another long hatching season, Alonda finally saw the giant turtle of the sea – a leatherback. These turtles can top 2,000 pounds,
and some live to be 80 years old.

“They’re extremely rare,” Alonda says. “It was incredible.”

Now a sophomore at Eastern Kentucky University, where she majors in environmental science, Alonda has managed to juggle two potentially competing interests: her devotion to both sea turtles and her family. The cattle ranch is still going, and her grandfather, who runs it, welcomes her help.

“Sometimes it’s nice to get back to your roots for a while,” she says. “That’s one of the main reasons I’m in school here – so I can be around and help out on the farm.”

Still, there are no doubts about Alonda’s future. She says she’ll definitely find work by or on the water when she’s finished with college.

“My dream job would be on a research boat traveling around the world, studying leatherbacks,” she says. “But I’d also love to work with the Park Service, to just be out there with the sea turtles or another endangered species, helping them stay alive.”

Story by Chris Hayhurst


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