Join us at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience on Thursday, June 26 to Celebrate Turtles and World Sea Turtle Day!
| Sea Turtle Hospital Display and Gift Shop | 5-6 PM | Center for Marine Studies |
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PRESENTATIONS:
Cat Eastman - Sea Turtles, Science, and Second Chances: Stories from the Hospital
Ed McGinley, Ph.D. - Photo Identification of Green Sea Turtles: Lessons Learned Over Four Years
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6-7 PM | Center for Marine Studies, Lohman Auditorium |
IN PERSON - Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium: 9505 Ocean Shore Blvd., St. Augustine, FL 32080
ONLINE - Click HERE to register and receive a link to watch the presentations live through Zoom on June 26 from 6-7 PM.
Catherine Eastman
Sea Turtle Hospital Program Manager, Sea Turtle Hospital at UF Whitney Laboratory
Catherine Eastman (Cat) is the Program Manager of the Sea Turtle Hospital at the University of Florida’s Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience. A dedicated sea turtle conservationist, Cat has been working with sea turtles in Florida since 1998. Her early career included environmental education and nonprofit leadership, combining outreach with hands-on conservation along Florida’s Atlantic coast.
In 2013, she became a founding member of the Whitney Lab’s Sea Turtle Hospital team. After two years of planning, permitting, and preparation, the hospital opened its doors in 2015. Since then, Cat has overseen the program’s development and operations, managing the administrative and educational components while helping connect clinical care with scientific research.
Cat holds a Master of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences from the University of Florida. Her graduate research focused on the health implications of epibiotic organisms on juvenile green sea turtles, contributing to a broader understanding of turtle health in estuarine habitats.
Ed McGinley, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Coordinator of Natural Sciences, Flagler College
Dr. McGinley received his undergraduate degree at Saint Francis University in Marine Biology, Masters degree from Frostburg State, and Ph.D. from West Virginia University. Both his masters and doctoral degrees are in Wildlife and Fisheries. He has been in the Department of Natural Sciences at Flagler College since 2012 and most recently was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019. His research involves marine ecology with a focus on estuarine communities. When starting at Flagler College, Dr. McGinley’s work focused on fish communities in the intracoastal waterway. Starting in 2020, his research expanded to look at juvenile green sea turtle populations at local marinas. Using photographs and pattern matching software, he has created a database of unique individual turtles that is approaching 600 wild turtles to date. Partnering with local sea turtle hospitals (the Whitney Sea Turtle Hospital and the Volusia Marine Science Center), he has identified another 300 unique hospital patients that have resided in the intracoastal in St Johns county, as well as tracking the location of some hospital patients (11 turtles) before or after their release from the hospital. This work would not be possible without the help of a small army of undergraduate students, current and alumni of Flagler College. With their help, we have one publication based on this work, and over a dozen conference presentations ranging from local conferences, e.g. The State of the Reserve at the GTM NERR to international conferences, e.g. the International Sea Turtle Society Symposium.