"Murph" will be the first male loggerhead turtle on Florida's west coast to be tagged with a transmitter that will tell us about his diving behavior at sea.

Release Details

Media should arrive at 8:15 a.m. Monday, Oct. 7. Release location is the SECOND walkway once you round the bend at Lido Beach. Once the road turns to the left, go past the Holiday Inn; the beach access is the second handicapped access on the right.

Release is expected to take place between 8:30-9 a.m.

RSVP to: Nadine Slimak at 941-302-4997, or nadines@mote.org. (Your RSVP will allow us to update you if plans change.)

Note: If you can't make it to the release, email me for video/photos.

Possible Story Angles:

When he is released, Murph will outfitted with a type of satellite transmitter that will provide insight on male turtle behavior in the wild. We believe that he is the first male loggerhead on Florida's west coast tagged with a transmitter that provides information about temperature and depth, in addition to location.

Mote Marine Laboratory's goals go beyond just helping individual animals. The fact that Mote is invested in rescuing, providing critical rehabilitative care and doing scientific research, allows us the unique ability to combine information from multiple sources about the lives and deaths of individual animals like Murph and apply it to help restore and protect whole populations of endangered and threatened species. Few organizations nationwide can claim such a comprehensive effort for sea turtles, let alone the numerous other species that Mote works with.

Declines in funding put programs like this in jeopardy. That matters. According to a recent study from the Florida Ocean Alliance, ocean-oriented tourism generates $8 billion for the state's economy. Without organizations like Mote Marine Laboratory focused on the health and conservation of our marine animals and habitats that draw visitors to our shores, Florida's economy will suffer.

Murph's Story


When Mote's Stranding Investigations Program got a call about a sea turtle that looked to be tangled up in line earlier this summer, they sprang into action to check out the report and rescue the turtle if needed.

What they discovered off Turtle Beach in south Sarasota County was a large loggerhead that appeared to be tethered to something underwater. While the turtle could surface for air, it couldn't get free. Unfortunately, the wind whipped up and drove the Mote team off the water before they could rescue the animal.

A few days later, after the wind died down enough for Mote Stranding Investigations Program Manager Gretchen Lovewell and Biologist Rebeccah Hazelkorn to safely rescue the turtle, they enlisted the help of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Law Enforcement Marine Patrol and helicopter, Sarasota County and Longboat Key marine patrols to help.

With the helicopter hovering above and providing a much-needed set of eyes to spot the turtle, the rest of the team motored out to the right spot and found a whopping 300-pound adult male loggerhead - one of the largest turtles ever rescued by Mote. "Once we cut the line, we quickly realized that he had to come back to Mote's Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Hospital," Hazelkorn said. "It just wasn't possible to disentangle him on the scene - the entanglement was too severe."

At the hospital, Rehabilitation and Medical Care Coordinator Lynne Byrd assessed the situation, finding that the turtle had fishing and crab trap line tangled around his neck and flippers and even had two large shark hooks caught in his shell. "His entanglement was pretty severe and we know he was stuck in one place for nearly a week," Byrd said. "But he's made a great recovery and we're ready to send this big guy home."

Because the turtle was rescued on Memorial Day, he was nicknamed "Murph" in honor of Navy Lt. Michael Murphy, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. Every Memorial Day, Crossfit gyms nationwide host a "Murph" workout - which Hazelkorn had done the morning of the rescue and so thought the name was a fitting tribute to a fallen officer.

Murph the turtle also turns out to be a great candidate for additional research because studies involving adult male loggerhead sea turtles are rare, said Kristen Mazzarella, manager of Mote's Sea Turtle Conservation and Research Program.

That's because the elusive and nomadic lifestyles that sea turtles live makes it extremely difficult to know where the males spend their time in the wild. Sea turtles spend their entire lives at sea. While females return to shore to nest, the males never come ashore again - unless they happen to be sick or injured and are rescued by an organization like Mote. That means it can be difficult for resource managers tasked with protecting this threatened species to enact rules to save them.

"Thanks to Mote's efforts to tag adult females over the years, we've been able to develop a pretty good picture of where they travel and the threats they face at sea," Mazzarella said. "But much less is known about what the males do in the wild. That would be like us studying only women and not men - you can't get a really good understanding of the entire species."

In the past, Mote has been able to tag four adult male hospital patients with satellite transmitters that have provided location information about the animals' travels in the wild. But the tag Mazzarella is putting on Murph will also show information about his diving patterns - giving a better indication of what he's doing. The transmitter will also give temperature readings for the waters he travels through.

"Typically, the transmitters we've used have merely provided a GPS reading - meaning we have an idea of where the turtles went," she said. "But this tag will also give us information about Murph's depth. Information about his diving and surfacing behavior can give us an idea of what the turtle is doing. Is he diving? Resting on the bottom? Or even breeding with females? This tag will give us some insights on that knowledge. We can also compare the information we gain from this tag to information from healthy male turtles that were tagged with similar transmitters on the east coast of Florida to gauge his recovery."

Helping to rescue, rehab, tag and release Murph will teach us many things about loggerhead lives at sea. But doing this work comes with a price tag ($5,500 just for the tag and satellite time for follow-up monitoring).

"Mote's ability to rescue, rehabilitate and return Murph to the wild, as well as provide the follow-up scientific monitoring needed to learn about turtle habits at sea, showcases the breadth and depth of our commitment to conservation," said Dr. Michael P. Crosby, President and CEO. "However, we can't undertake efforts to help keep our oceans healthy or save threatened and endangered species without support from the community. Our birth, growth and impact has been in great measure through the generous commitments of our donors, and I hope efforts like the one we undertook to help Murph will continue to receive such support."

Thank You

Mote thanks the following individuals and organizations for providing the funds to tag Murph and supporting the satellite time so we can collect the data:

• The Sara Roberts Foundation
  
• Stephen and Tabitha King
  
• The Wooster School
  
• Barbara Brizdle
  
• Ann Anderson
  
• West Coast Inland Navigation District

Support Research, Rehabilitation and Release

To do your part to help support wildlife and habitat conservation, please make a donation today atmote.org/donate.

Follow Murph at Sea

Follow Murph's travels at sea at seaturtle.org/tracking. (Murph should appear under the Mote Marine Laboratory Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Hospital page within a week of release, that link ishttp://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/index.shtml?project_id=141.)