Turtle Talks is an environmental road show. It is a student created and six year sustained program. The traveling classroom has been presented to thousands of students and adults. The core objective of the project is to educate residents on the bio-ecology of sea turtles. Turtle Talks is an educational seminar that was designed to enlighten young people to the plight that turtles and sea life face in the marine world. The mission focuses on public awareness for youth and adults, empowering them to become stewards through knowledge of our natural resources.

In 2001 walking the beach in southwest Florida the team founder, saw the yellow maker stakes in the sand. That were stuck in the sand to notify beach goers that Loggerhead and Green turtles had nested on the site. Zander was eleven years old the summer he met Linda Soderquist, a local teacher and artist who monitors the sea turtle nesting for the state of Florida on Little Gasparilla Island. She explained to him that the turtle species that nest on the beach were threatened and endangered. Each year volunteers walk the beach and keep statistics on the success or failure of every nest along the coast. It was that summer that the middle schooler started walking the beach with the patrollers and realized the steady decline in nesting numbers. He thought if I don’t know about this problem then neither do other kids. It was his idea to create an educational program and sharing it with kids. The message was to tell youth what they can do to help the fate of these ancient reptiles.

That school year the Turtle Talks team was founded to get the message out to young students in the community. In 2004 an activity book was written as a handout to accompany the presentations. Now in its sixth printing there are one hundred thousand copies of the booklet in print. A high school Spanish club translated the book into Spanish and a student in France penned it into French. This year a similar book has been authored on the threatened gopher tortoise that roams in the five Southeastern states with twenty thousand books now in print.

This summer the team joined the Adopt-A-Shore program. The group frequents a stretch of the Intercoastal waterway off of Englewood, Florida. They contacted Keep Charlotte Beautiful, Inc. and were able to adopt a section of water where that they go wakeboarding. The team has pulled out tires, floating trash, and derelict crab traps.

Internationally, several members of the sea turtle guild have traveled to visit emerging Caribbean countries. They have reached out to the children in order to make them preservationists of their natural resources. This effort has established a sister school program with students in Florida and students in the Bahamas, Trinidad, Panama, Mexico and Costa Rica. Their goal is to keep spreading the word of sea turtle conservation with children that share and live in close proximity to these rich, natural treasures.

Partner Statement

Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute applauds Turtle Talks, an "environmental road show" presented by Lemon Bay High School students. A chance encounter between student Zander Srodes and teacher and sea turtle volunteer Linda Soderquist on a sea turtle nesting beach in southwest Florida has blossomed into a program that has informed thousands of students and adults about the conservation challenges sea turtles face.  Innovative, science-based materials (such as a children's sea turtle activity book and a biodegradable display on the impacts of trash in the ocean) are not only raising awareness of the plight of the sea turtles, but could also serve as a model for similar programs for other imperiled species such as manatees. These energetic stewards of the environment embody the HSWRI mission "to return to the sea some measure of the benefits derived from it."