Grant: 22-005R
Project Title: Year 2: Connecting Health and Ecology for Juvenile Sea Turtles in Eastern Central Florida
Project Manager: Kate Mansfield, Ph.D.
Organization: University of Central Florida (Research and Educational Institute)
Grant Amount: $12,519.00
Completion Date: 2025-04-14
Summary: Wildlife health assessments are a necessary tool for understanding conservation threats and population status of protected species. Using baseline blood values as an evaluation strategy allows for improved population assessment, the ability to track health changes over time, and evaluate impacts throughout environmental disturbances. Once a baseline for a sub-population or aggregation is established, long-term monitoring can help indicate when individuals or a sub-population is deviating from "healthy" levels and thereby identifying risks, aiding in conservation and management. Deviations highlight the need to evaluate ecological factors such as disease prevalence and habitat suitability. We propose to progress our successfully funded 2021 Sea Turtle License Plate grant on nesting females in the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge (21-019R) and next focus on the health and ecology of juvenile loggerhead and green turtles foraging in eastern central Florida near-shore habitats. These projects are components of a larger project which aims to evaluate the interface between health and ecology for these species across life-stages and habitats. These analyses will provide a better understanding of how environmental factors affect sea turtle health using existing and newly collected samples from juvenile green and loggerhead sea turtles captured during routine in-water field work. 
Results: Since May 2022, three announcements pertaining to this project and funding have been published via multiple social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, X) reaching 350+ people, and a UCF press release was disseminated in the UCF Coastal Insider Newsletter. Two public presentations were given that included components of this research, Tiffany Dawson's dissertation proposal (Nov 2022, 50+ attendees) and a public outreach talk at a Sea Turtle Preservation Society monthly meeting (June 2023, 50+ attendees). Two technical permitting reports pertaining to the blood sample collection were filed with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (2022-2023, documents attached). There is also a continuous acknowledgment provided on the UCF Marine Turtle Research Group's website. Pending acceptance, an oral presentation will be given at the 43rd International Sea Turtle Symposium (March 2025) focusing on a portion of the results from this study. Plasma protein quantification included three of the five Agilent Protein 230 kits for protein fractionation and a Bicinchoninic Acid Assay (BCA) kit for total protein quantification. Sample collection from juvenile green turtles was completed in August 2023 (IRL n=112, Trident n=144) and juvenile loggerhead samples were completed in September 2024 (IRL n=45; all sample processing except for hematocrit values are ongoing). Preliminary data for green turtle total protein shows that values fell within literature values (Bolten & Bjorndal 1992, Kelly et al. 2015).