From Dead Turtles to TEDs: A 20-Year Fight to Save Sea Life
This is the final installment of a four-part series exploring the remarkable legacy of Carol Ruckdeschel and the Cumberland Island Museum. This series delved into Ruckdeschel's impact, the museum's contributions, and the importance of preserving this invaluable collection for future generations.
Last November, I was invited by Carol Ruckdeschel to photograph the Cumberland Island Museum Collection before it was transferred to the National Park Service for inventory. I was thrilled to spend two days photographing more than four decades of Cumberland Island ecological history. And I knew I would hear many fantastic stories from Ruckdeschel as she showed me around the museum.
Here is the story of how hundreds of Chiquita banana boxes ended up in the Cumberland Island Museum.
When you first walk into the Cumberland Island Museum there is a table with a guest book for all visitors to sign. And above the guest book table is a bulletin board displaying charts, signs, and photographs. One of the charts on the bulletin board showed the number of dead sea turtles that washed up on Cumberland Island.
Next to the dead sea turtle chart is a sign that reads “TED – Trawler Enabler Device, NOT Turtle Exclusion Device.” I asked Ruckdeschel about the sign and she pointed to the hundreds of Chiquita banana boxes stacked against the walls in the museum. She said each banana box held the remains of a dead sea turtle.
In the 1981, Ruckdeschel began keeping track of every dead sea turtle that washed up on Cumberland Island. She performed a necropsy on every turtle to determine the cause of death. Results indicated the sea turtles were drowning.
Ruckdeschel discovered the turtles had bloody spots on the top of their nose and water in their lungs. The turtles were trying to push their way out of the net using their nose to find an escape route before they drowned. “It was heartbreaking,” she said.
For two decades, Ruckdeschel collected dead sea turtles on the beach to determine the cause of death. From 1981 to 2005, the number of sea turtles found dead on the beach increased yearly. In 2005, a record 106 dead sea turtles washed up on the beaches of Cumberland Island.
In the late 1970s NOAA implemented rules requiring trawl net fishermen to use TEDs, turtle exclusion devices, to prevent non-targeted species deaths. Net makers, shrimpers, Sea Grant, Georgia DNR, NOAA, and others worked to design and redesign TEDs, looking for ways to prevent unwanted deaths. According to Ruckdeschel, it was local trawl net maker Billy Burbank who finally solved the problem by making a simple adjustment to the TED design.
Billy Burbank III is the grandson of William Hunter Burbank. William moved to Fernandina Beach from Cumberland Island and began making trawl nets for the shrimp industry in 1915. The Burbank family has been in the net-making business for over 100 years in Fernandina Beach. Billy Burbank officially joined the family net-making business at the age of 9.
Young Burbank proved to be a natural at net making. He enlarged shrimp nets significantly in the 1980s which increased catch. He was also aware that larger nets meant an increase in “incidental catch or by-catch,” which included sea turtles.
There were many TED designs and re-designs before sea turtle deaths began to decrease significantly. Ruckdeschel and Burbank came to understand when a sea turtle is caught in a trawl net, it “pushes up” in the net with its nose looking for a way out. Early TED models utilized a door that required sea turtles to push down to escape the net unharmed. Once the angle adjustment was made to allow TED doors to be pushed up for sea turtles to escape unharmed, sea turtles stopped drowning in trawl nets. Today, all trawl nets must contain a TED device placed at the proper angle allowing non-targeted species to escape.
This discovery may not have been possible if Ruckdeschel was not collecting and analyzing how sea turtles washing up on Cumberland Island were dying. And, this discovery may not have been possible if Burbank had not worked with others in the industry to solve the problem.
In 2000, NOAA honored Burbank with the Environmental Hero Award for his tireless efforts to preserve and protect our nation’s environment. In 2014, he received the Florida Folk Heritage Award for his significant contributions to Florida’s cultural heritage through outstanding achievements in the art of net making.
Changes in the shrimping industry led Burbank to cast a wider net looking for new business. Although Burbank continued making shrimp nets, he added sports nets to his product line to keep the family business floating along. Today, Burbank is retired. He told me he is enjoying life watching his grandson grow up and feeding the deer on his farm.
The Amelia Island History Museum recorded interviews with Burbank about his family contributions to Fernandina Beach and the shrimping industry. You can listen to the full interview here. In 2014, the Fernandina Observer published an article by Peggy A. Bulger when Burbank was awarded the Florida Folk Heritage Award. You can read that story here.
Thank you, Carol Ruckdeschel and thank you, Billy Burbank for your dedication and love of nature. The world is a better place because of you both!
