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Hernando Today

Turning The Tide For Sea Turtles

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By TONY MARRERO, Hernando Today

Published: January 23, 2008

BROOKSVILLE - The tale of sea turtles is still more cautionary than triumphant, and far from over.

Dr. Archie Carr has had a prominent role in the story so far, and his biographer will be in Brooksville tomorrow to talk about how sea turtles are doing today and why Carr deserves much of the credit for a rebound of at least one species.

Dr. Frederick "Fritz" Davis will discuss his book, "The Man Who Saved Sea Turtles: Archie Carr and the Origins of Conservation Biology."

The lecture, sponsored by the Hernando Audubon Society, begins at 7 p.m. at the Community Activity Center, 205 E. Fort Dade Ave. Admission is free.

Carr - a scientist, naturalist and ecologist - dedicated most of his life to the study of all kinds of turtles, but his work in tagging, tracking and counting the green turtle is widely credited with helping save the species from extinction. When he died of stomach cancer in 1987 at the age of 78, Carr was widely considered the world authority on the animals.

But Carr's life is fascinating for another reason, Davis said this week during a telephone interview from Tallahassee, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in environmental history and the history of science and medicine at Florida State University.

Carr, a native of Mobile, Ala., was "on the vanguard of scientists who, in studying a group of organisms like sea turtles, realized they were critically endangered," Davis said. "His career reflected a number of shifts in the biological sciences, from skilled natural history to rigorous ecological studies and, ultimately, on to conservation biology."

In other words, the science of studying animals for the sake of heading off their extinction was born during Carr's lifetime, and he helped shape that science.

One of the ways he did it was by writing books accessible to even the most science-phobic that chronicled his own studies and adventures, Davis said.

"The Windward Road: Adventures of a Naturalist on Caribbean Shores," published in 1955, is a folksy account of Carr's search for the green turtle in the Caribbean islands.

"It is the sea that holds the great mysteries," Carr wrote. "There is still much to be learned in the land, to be sure, but it is the third dimension of the oceans that hides the answers to broad elemental problems of natural history."

The book attracted the attention of environmental-minded philanthropists who started a movement that would eventually become the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, which still supports extensive sea turtle conservation efforts.

Carr had a talent for relating to people from all walks of life, Davis said, from government officials to Caribbean fishermen who subsisted off turtles and their eggs.

In the 1960s, Carr launched "Operation Green Turtle" with the assistance of the U.S. Navy. The project distributed green turtle eggs and hatchlings to various nesting beaches around the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

For his research, Davis spent three weeks on the pitch-black beaches of Tortuguero, Costa Rica, where he worked alongside researchers who continue the turtle tagging project Carr began some four decades ago. The green turtles nesting there "were in abundance, a legacy of Archie Carr's," Davis said. Another legacy: The plea for beach residents to minimize the lighting on their property to keep from distracting the hatchlings from their journey back to the sea.

Carr was also a dedicated Florida naturalist. He received his Ph.D. in zoology and two other degrees from the University of Florida in 1937, where he taught for most of his life and met his wife, Marjorie Harris, who would become a well-known biologist and Florida environmentalist.

The Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, a 20-mile section of Atlantic coastline near Merritt Island that protects nesting sites for endangered sea turtles, opened in 1991. Scientists estimate that some 90 percent of the population of loggerhead turtles nests in Florida, and their numbers are still troublingly few, Davis said.

Davis, a native of Rochester, N.Y., is also a Gator and lover of Florida ecology. While working on his master's degree at UF, his adviser mentioned that no one had yet written a biography of Carr. He wrote one for his thesis, then went on to Yale to earn his doctorate in history of science, with a focus on pesticides and toxicology.

When he returned to Florida for the job at FSU, he decided to extend the thesis into his first book. Oxford University Press published the biography in June.

Mary Dowdell of Hernando Audubon met Davis while he was at Yale and Dowdell was working for Audubon in Connecticut.

Dowdell described Davis as a "dynamic" lecturer who has received accolades as "a person who can inspire you and get you excited."

Davis also will show a short film about the Kemp's ridley arribada, a particularly feisty species of sea turtle that Carr studied.

Davis admitted that attendees shouldn't expect a reprise of one of Carr's pre-lecture icebreakers: Carr, known for his sense of humor, sometimes started the events by walking to the podium with a small snake in his mouth, and then opened his mouth and let the snake drop into a glass.

If You Go

WHAT: Lecture by Dr. Frederick "Fritz" Davis, who wrote "The Man Who Saved Sea Turtles," a biography of the scientist and naturalist Archie Carr. Presented by Hernando Audubon Society.

WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 24.

WHERE: Community Activity Center, 205 E. Fort Dade Ave.

ADMISSION: Free.

CONTACT: Mary Dowdell, 797-7874.

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandotoday.com.

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