Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
A SPOT FOR SEA STUDENTS
New marine center will teach visitors about our coastal ecosystem
HOLLYWOOD — After waiting 13 years, Broward County residents finally have their own live sea turtle exhibit, part of a larger effort to educate the public about the coastal ecosystem and threats to marine life.
The county’s new Marine Environmental Education Center, a collaborative effort with Nova Southeastern University, opens to the public Friday on Hollywood beach. The county bought the half-acre site at 4414 Surf Road in 2004 using parks bond money and has struggled since then to get a program up and running.
The property has been closed to the public for most of the time since the county’s purchase. That made it one of the most expensive and least-used public lands of its size in South Florida.
The main attraction for visitors at the $6 million center will be
Captain, an injured teenage sea turtle who will be a permanent resident of the site’s 18- by 38-foot backyard saltwater pool, right next to a Guy Harvey sea mural.
The center will be the only place in the county with a live sea turtle exhibit, County Parks Director Dan West said. The Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton and Loggerhead Marine Life Center in Juno Beach have sea turtles. The two also treat and rehabilitate injured sea turtles, something that won’t be done at the Hollywood center.
Interactive exhibits at the Broward center show how discarded plastics and other trash threaten sea life, allow visitors to track the migratory patterns of sea turtles, sharks, marlins and sailfish, or let kids pretend they’re sea turtles caught in specially designed fishing nets that let them escape while keeping the fish inside.
One exhibit displays a variety of light bulbs to show what kind of lighting should and shouldn’t be used along the coast in order to ensure sea turtle hatchlings on the beach don’t become disoriented by artificial light in their quest to reach the ocean.
The center will cater to school field trips, which could include seeing the beach itself and learning about the dune system and sea grape trees that hide the center from the beach.
“Although we know it’s taken time to acquire, renovate and re-purpose the entire site, along with developing the partnership with Nova, we feel the final result will be well worth the wait,” West said.
The county paid $3.7 million to buy the 1941 Carpenter House — named after its former owners — using a voterapproved bond and a $1.5 million grant from Florida Communities Trust. The county then put $1.6 million more into the site, which it says has historical, ecological and archaeological significance.
The Great Recession and cuts in county park staff delayed the center’s public opening, except for renting of some space for meeting rooms. The county partnered with Nova Southeastern about seven years ago to provide a marine-science component. The university has spent about $750,000 on the center, West said, and the university is staffing the center with three people connected to its ocean campus at Port Everglades.
In recent years, the property has been used as a gathering spot for a hatchling release program, Sea Turtles and Their Babies, held in July and August. Sea turtle nesting season, when coastal lights are required to be dimmed, began Wednesday and runs through Oct. 31.
There’s already a county nature center less than a mile away. However, while the Anne Kolb Nature Center focuses on mangrove estuaries, the new center will be about the entire coastal system and the sea turtles, said Glenn Goodwin, one of two NSU graduate students on the new center’s staff.
The star of the new center is Captain, the green sea turtle who will reside there permanently because her injuries from being struck by a boat seven years ago make her a poor candidate for being released back into the ocean. After a previous release, she was found stranded within a month.
Captain, who took up residence in the pool two months ago after being at Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota, has two weights on her shell that she needs to be able to dive.
“She’d be floating at the surface without them,” said Derek Burkholder, the center’s director and a Nova Southeastern research scientist.
Captain has the retrofitted pool’s constant 78-degree water all to herself, but officials eventually hope to house a second injured sea turtle there.
Captain feasts on green leafy lettuce and Romaine, green bell peppers and cucumbers. The staff is slowly weaning her off shrimp and fish, which is often in the diet of young green sea turtles but less so as they age.
Amy Hupp, a NSU graduate student who works closely with Captain, has feeders, a tube for Captain to hide her head in, a jungle gym made of PVC pipe and other items to simulate things Captain would see in the wild, but they stay in the pool only a short while at a time.
“Captain will eat everything that is in her pool,” Burkholder said. “She was eating the sand and the pebbles in her tank [at Mote Marine]. She ate so much of it, it actually blocked up her digestive system.”
Returning visitors should get to see a growing Captain over the years. She weighs about 50 pounds now but could grow to 400 pounds or more over a lifetime that could reach 80 to 100 years, Burkholder said.