‘Doc’ Ehrhart leaves legacy of a refuge
MELBOURNE — “Doc” Ehrhart wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty — or bitten — or stung — or wrapped around an ornery rattlesnake.
He’d often joke: ““I’m not any good with computers, but if you ever need someone to free-hand a rattlesnake, or skin a skunk without puncturing the scent gland… I’m your guy.’ “
But it was the mysterious, giant gentle turtles nesting near NASA’s Cape Canaveral launch pads that most piqued Llew “Doc” Ehrhart’s curious nature and captured his imagination as a young scientist in the 1970s.
Known internationally for his long-term sea turtle research and advocacy, Llewellyn (Llew) Ehrhart Jr., “Doc” as most knew him, died at his Oviedo home on March 3. He was 79.
He was preceded in death by his beloved wife of 53 years, Carol. He is survived by his twin daughters, Ashley Ehrhart, of Oviedo, and Samantha “Mandy” Silver (husband Andrew), of Winter Springs.
In a life spent digging in the dunes, the eggs that Ehrhart unearthed revealed deeper truths about the threatened and endangered sea turtles that begin their journeys here, more so than anywhere else on Earth. They were his passion, his life’s journey, and his mission to save.
The professor emeritus at University of Central Florida would have turned 80 on April 22 — Earth Day, a fitting birthday according those who knew him and see his legacy as unparalleled in sea turtle conservation biology.
A naturalist of the old-school variety, Ehrhart’s unprecedented data proved that sea turtles nest on the Space Coast like nowhere else. He pieced together groundbreaking research into how many sea turtles nest along
the Brevard County and Indian River County coastline and why, laying the scientific groundwork that led to establishment of the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge in 1991.
Many consider the refuge, which spans 20.5 miles from Melbourne Beach to Wabasso Beach along Florida’s east coast, as his greatest achievement. But it was the students he mentored who rose the ranks of sea turtle conservation biology that “Doc” and countless others consider his greatest legacy.
His footprints stretched far and wide along eastern Florida’s beaches, but the imprint on those he mentored went much deeper and wider.
“Dad was so proud, he really considered among his greatest accomplishments all the people he taught,” his daughter, Ashley Ehrhart, of Oviedo, said. “He wasn’t like a big political guy, but he was instrumental,” she said of his role in establishing
the Carr refuge.
Born April 22, 1942 in Dallastown, a central Pennsylvania town with a population of about 3,000, Doc pursued his PhD in zoology at Cornell University.
He’d make numerous trips to Florida. His dissertation focused on Florida mice. Doc would bring mice back to Ithaca in shoe boxes for his studies, as was common in the ‘60s.
As he neared graduation, a friend called to see if he was interested in a position as a mammologist at a new university in Orlando. He took the job at Florida Technological University, which would become UCF, a year after it opened its doors in 1968.
Doc’s conservation journey began in earnest in the early 1970s at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, searching for skunks, shrews, mice and other small mammals where the space agency had planned to pave the Space Shuttle landing strip. In 1972, he
received NASA funding to study vertebrate ecology at KSC. He lured a fellow graduate student from Cornell, Franklin “Buck” Snelson, whose doctoral research focused on fish, to join him on the faculty at FTU and on the KSC research.
While his main job was live-trapping rats and other vermin near KSC’s two main launch pads, the strange huge-shelled creatures on the beach soon caught his curious eye. One day in 1973, while at the headquarters of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, the refuge biologist, Jim Baker, told Doc he’d seen sea turtles nesting out on KSC’s beach.
To Ehrhart’s surprise, no one was studying sea turtle nesting on NASA’s property. Almost nothing was known about their behaviors.
So he and his students began collecting data about sea turtle nesting habits, monitoring nests late at night and at the crack of
dawn to avoid the hottest parts of summer days in Brevard, just like nesting and hatching turtles do.
“It’s hard work,” Ann Marie Lauritsen, a biologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Falls Church, Virginia, recalls of her days as Ehrhart’s students in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She’d later become southeast sea turtle coordinator for USFWS, and now is in the agency’s division of international affairs.
“It was not easy, but it was just immersing ourselves in the biology of turtles and truly understanding the species and creating a sense of awe,” Lauritsen recalls of Ehrhart infectious enthusiasm. “‘Doc’ was pivotal in terms of inspiring curiosity about the species and an interest in learning more. He did that for all of his students that worked for him.”
That enthusiasm never waned. He was going out netting turtles right before
COVID, she added.
“It was about getting out there and seeing the species,” Lauritsen said. “He really reached everyone where they were. His footprints extended widely.”
Doc’s data would prove that female sea turtles return to their their natal beaches to nest, highlighting the urgency of protecting those beaches.
His team tagged one leatherback sea turtle named “China Girl” in 1994, for example, and the turtle returned every two to three years to nest in the Archie Carr Refuge for more than two decades.
Ehrhart’s research began to shift southward, to the area that’s now the Carr refuge, after an ambitious graduate student in his group, Paul Raymond, found a way to fund his Master’s degree research by moving south to Brevard County where officials wanted to understand the impact of beach renourishment on sea turtle nesting.
Raymond was seeing more turtles there in one night than in a month in the area around KSC.
The long-term research Ehrhart’s group would prove the 20-mile stretch of beach South Brevard had the densest sea turtle nesting for green turtles in the western hemisphere.
He and his students would also shed light on how beach lights disoriented countless sea turtle hatchlings, leading to Brevard County in 1985 enacting the state’s first ordinance to limit beach lighting during turtle nesting season.
His science soon showed the green sea turtle was so far gone in Florida, he feared they’d never bounce back. He knew it was possible, though, and ultimately helped make it happen. Greens grew back like compound interest.
“He called that among the greatest conservation success stories ever,” Ashley Ehrhart said.