11 minute read
Passing the Turtle Torch
After founding one of the most well-known sea turtle hospitals in the nation, Jean Beasley is hanging up her flippers this year.
She started the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue & Rehabilitation Center in Topsail Beach in the late 1990s and has led the organization through the rescue and release of hundreds of turtles over the past decades. However, time has begun to take its toll on the woman who’s known by many as “Mom Turtle.” “I’m going on 86,” she says, “so it’s age, primarily, that led me to retire now.” She adds that her family is now mostly in western North Carolina and Tennessee, so she’s going to move there to be closer to her children and grandchildren. “I had family here, and my turtle family, of course, but there comes a time when you need your blood relatives to take care of you.” Beasley will keep a home on Topsail Island, and says she’ll be back—when it’s not hurricane season. And her heart will always be with the turtles. “Te turtles are the reason for everything,” she says. “I think the main thing that’s kept us going is that we put the turtles first and do what’s best for them. Tis building is here for them. Te person who donated the land didn’t give it to us—they gave it to the turtles. And no matter who comes and goes, the turtles will remain.”
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A NEW ‘MOM TURTLE ’
Once she decided to retire, Beasley and her team of volunteers conducted an extensive, nationwide search for a new executive director of the hospital.
“We were very intent about choosing the right person, and I think we did,” Beasley says. “We wanted someone special, someone who could hit the ground running, but not want to immediately change everything.”
Kathy Zagzebski, a native of Massachusetts, was that person. “I was a turtle lady before I came here,” Zagzebski says. “I was working with a marine mammal hospital in Massachusetts, where I worked with seals and Kemp’s Ridley turtles. I really never thought about leaving Massachusetts, but this opportunity came up and it was just the perfect position for me.”
She says that she was “a fan girl” of Beasley’s long before she interviewed for the position. “You don’t remember this,” she said to Beasley, “but I came here one summer and used my ‘I work with sea turtles card’ and you gave me a behind-thescenes tour, and I just fell in love.”
“Nobody can fill Jean’s shoes,” she adds. “What she’s accomplished here is incredible.”
Zagzebski started her work as executive director on Feb. 1, and ever since, has been spending time getting to know the volunteer staff and the 45 turtles currently in residence at the hospital.
“What she brings is a new vision to what we’ve already done,” Beasley says.
- JEAN BEASLEY
30 | SE North Carolina Magazine This page: New Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue & Rehabilitation Center executive director Kathy Zagzebski and one of her flippered patients. Opposite page (clockwise from left): Kathy Zagzebski and Jean Beasley tend to one of their rockstar patients, Spock. Kathy Zagzebski looks in on Canal, a green turtle with buoyancy issues who unfortunately can not be released and will find a new home in an aquarium. Jean Beasley is shown caring for a turtle with some of her longtime volunteers.
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MIRACLES EVERY DAY
“I’ve really been spending a lot of time listening to people,” Zagzebski says. “I think we do an amazing job, helping turtles that in many ways, seem beyond help. One of our Kemp’s Ridley now, Maverick, is one of those miracles that happen here every day.”
Maverick has been a patient at the sea turtle hospital for about four years. When he first arrived, he had metabolic bone disease, which is one of the ongoing effects of being cold-stunned.
Because sea turtles are reptiles, they can easily suffer from hypothermic conditions when water temperatures dip below 50 degrees. Usually, they are unable to swim as a result.
“He couldn’t even move his flippers,” Beasley says. “And now, he’s just about ready to go home.”
Another miracle patient is the appropriately named Xena the Warrior Princess, a loggerhead. She was found almost comatose at one of the ferries in Cape Lookout. By the time she was transported into the hospital’s sick bay, she had stopped breathing, Beasley recalls.
“We had to give her artificial respiration,” she explains, which involved lifting her front flippers up and down, pumping air into her lungs. “After 10 minutes of this, she finally took a breath.”
- KATHY ZAGZEBSKI
32 | SE North Carolina Magazine Myrtle, one of several turtles up for adoption.
Beasley and the hospital’s veterinarian, Dr. Craig Harms of N.C. State University’s Veterinary School, believe that Xena was one of a number of turtles who ingested toxic algae, which can cause paralysis.
“I mean, she was basically dead when she got here,” Beasley says. “And now she’s almost ready to be released, so she really is our warrior princess.”
Spock is the friendliest of all the current residents of the hospital, swimming up to visitors by her tank in the Turtle Bay, and seemingly grinning for cameras. Spock was a cold-stunned turtle as well, and had to have cataract surgery shortly after her arrival. Once listless, she’s now a star patient, and is on track to be released back to the ocean this summer.
Counterclockwise from left: Kathy Zagzebski calls Parsley her "baby." The Kemp's ridley was the first turtle she cared for when she arrived at the hospital. Volunteers feed the baby turtles, called hatchlings, in the sick bay until they can be released back to the ocean. Maverick, one of the miracles of the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Hospital.
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A LIFETIME OF MEMORIES
Having helped to heal so many turtles over the past 24 years has led to many memories.
In fact, Beasley says one of the things she’ll do to pass the time once she retires in June is to write a book. “I’m writing it mainly for my family; I’m not sure anyone else will want to read it,” she says.
“Are you kidding?” Zagzebski interrupts. “Everyone will want to read it!”
Still maintaining her humility, Beasley responds, “I don’t know about that.”
Te book will contain many stories from her time with the turtles, some of them funny and some of them sad.
She recalls a visitor to the sea turtle hospital’s first location, a small, 800-square-foot facility on the southern end of Topsail Island, in the town of Topsail Beach.
“He walked up to me and said, ‘I have a question for you. How do you train the turtles to crawl into these tubs?” Beasley says to the laughter of all those in the room. “I had the same reaction you all are having—I laughed. But he was serious as could be, and I realized he wasn’t joking. So, I reminded myself that I shouldn’t laugh at him, and I told him about these turtles’ nesting fidelity.”
She went on to explain that nesting turtles will always return to the beach where they were born—sometimes multiple times, and will even lay eggs on top of a previous nest, a fact
Cutlines, clockwise from left
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-KATHY ZAGZEBSKI
that even Duke Universitytrained Zagzebski didn’t know.
“I love these stories,” she says. “I learn something new every time I talk to her.”
Beasley also recalls another funny story, soon after the Topsail Turtle Project began—something of a precursor to what would become the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue & Rehabilitation Center. During nesting season, volunteers sit with the nests and help to ensure that the hatchlings safely reach the ocean. Tere can be many obstacles in their path, from holes dug in the sand to predators from above. Lights from the buildings and piers also can guide the baby turtles away from the sea and toward land.
Te volunteers also dig a trench from the nest to the ocean, to help make the path easier. Tis night, the volunteers had fixed the berm around the pathway of a nest located near one of the piers. Tey were sitting by the nest and drinking tea from a portable tea set that one of the volunteers, who was from England, had brought to the nest-sitting session.
Beasley tells the story: “We sat down and she passed out these cups of hot tea. I
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happened to look up at the pier, and there was a group of about eight to 10 people on the pier, pointing at us and looking at us, and in a little while, they came walking up the beach toward us. And so, they got close to us and the leader, obviously, said, ‘How y’all doing tonight?’ A good old North Carolina greeting. I said, ‘Just fine, how are you doing?’ and sipped my tea. He said, ‘I’m doing fine. Me and my friends were up there, talking about y’all and just wondering what’s going on down here.’ And I said, ‘Well, we have a group that believes in extraterrestrial activity, and we’re expecting an alien spaceship to land here tonight. Well, as I’m talking, his face changed totally. Tey were like, jaws dropping. And after a few minutes, he said, ‘Naaaaw.’” She laughs. “I just had to mess with them a little bit.”
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“We had lots of things like that over the years,” Beasley continues. “Tose will be going in the book.”
Without a doubt, Zagzebski will have her own memories that can fill a book by the time her tenure as executive director ends— hopefully, she says, when she herself retires.
And she knows times are tough for everyone, due to the pandemic. “So much of our revenue came from visitors paying that nominal fee to come into the hospital and see the turtles. Obviously, with the pandemic, we couldn’t do that anymore, so we opened up the gift shop online and made our adoption process easier to do through the website.”
Te hospital also promoted adopting two green sea turtles for St. Patrick’s Day, and has many more promotions planned, although both Zagzebski and Beasley hope that the hospital will be able to reopen to visitors sometime this year.
“I think we have an opportunity to expand outreach even more,” Zagzebski says. “And maybe
"I think we have an opportunity to expand outreach even more. And maybe we can even use COVID as a way to reach out to people and help them understand the importance of ocean conservation." - KATHY ZAGZEBSKI
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we can even use COVID as a way to reach out to people and help them understand the importance of ocean conservation.”
For the latest information on events and online giving opportunities, visit the website at seaturtlehospital.org.
Zagzebski also reminds visitors and residents that sea turtle nesting season starts in May and runs through November. Tose with beachfront homes should turn their lights off at night, and beachgoers should fill in any holes they may have made in the sand. Also, yearround, anyone who spots an injured or sick sea turtle should call the hospital immediately, at 910-329-0222.
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