Turtle Island Restoration Network is thrilled to announce we were named Best Non-Profit Organization in Galveston.com’s 2019 Best of the Island Awards!
Our office in Galveston, Texas protects and restores populations of endangered sea turtles and marine biodiversity on the Texas coast and throughout the Gulf of Mexico.
Just this year, our Gulf team made significant strides in our goals for education, hands-on sea turtle conservation, volunteerism, and advocacy and community arts including:
- Recruiting more than 300 volunteers to look for nesting sea turtles from April-June. In total, we patrolled 18,360 miles of beach and contributed to locating and protecting a total of 190 nests throughout the entire Texas coast!
- Managing 49% of the fishing line collection tubes in Galveston County, collecting 1,081 pounds of fishing line that would otherwise end up in the ocean.
- Installing 19 sea turtle statues designed by local artists around Galveston Island as part of our Turtles About Town campaign to raise awareness of the importance to protect the world’s most critically endangered sea turtle, the Kemp’s ridley.
- Expanding our community-based microplastic pollution research through student and volunteer engagement, a project that is contributing to a growing need to collect, report, and share publicly accessible data on microplastics and plastic pollutants Gulf-wide.
- Submitting more than 7,000 petitions to request state and federal agencies acknowledge the record-breaking number of stranded sea turtles and the need for Turtle Excluder Devices on all fishing vessels in the Gulf of Mexico.
We are so grateful for the ongoing support of our community and our members to engage Galveston and the upper Texas coast community in protecting iconic sea turtles and our coast’s natural heritage. Thank you for your ongoing support!
Follow our sea turtle saving efforts in the Gulf of Mexico by signing up for our email list.
