Inwater Research Group

Irg receives a grant from Florida power & light co to rescue sea turtles trapped in power plant cooling canals. Thousands of sea turtles are captured by the irg annually. Turtles are measured, weighed, tagged and examined for impact due to power plant operations before they are. Safely released back into the ocean. Data collected as part of this project are provided to and used by the national marine fisheries services, u. s. fish and wildlife service and Florida fish and wildlife service to track population trends of sea turtles on the east coast of Florida. Irg publishes this data in scientific journals and presents findings each year at the international sea turtle symposium. As part of this project, irg conducts sea turtle nesting surveys. Irg also conducts public sea turtle walks during june and july, providing education on sea turtles and sea turtle conservation.

Irg partnered with the national save a sea turtle foundation education department to promote quality educational programming. The outreach program is free to teachers and includes tailor-made lesson plans, in-class, and new traveling trunks containing all the education material teachers would need to carry out four conservation-based lesson plans. The partnership has been able to reach over 20,000 students in one year with these programs.

Irg has various smaller projects involving sea turtle education, nesting, measurement, monitoring and tagging. These projects are funded by public corporations, state, federal and local organizations. The programs are: key west national wildlife refuge, lake worth lagoon program, big bend, hawks channel big green turtles, boca reef, biscayne bay/upper keys, rivera beach power plant, indian river lagoon, force blue, palm beach county and coastal conservation program. Irg provide sinformation obtained in theses various programs for the further protection of sea turtles through technical papers and conferences.