Generally, the week after Christmas through mid-January is a quiet time in the tourism office. It’s the time we clean files, organize, and complete the last edits of the visitor guide. Not this year. And we’re not complaining. Pender County is one of the fastest growing counties in North Carolina and we can attest to that with the addition of several new businesses and expansion of others. This...

Things have been relatively calm at our hospital. We can thank the winter that didn’t happen - yet - for the fact that we’re not inundated with cold-stunned turtles - not that our volunteers are complaining in any way about it. We do have quite a few New England Kemp’s and “local” greens in our Sick Bay that are taking some extra time to recover from their exposure to the first arctic...

It’s not easy to ignore the siren song of our patients. Often it starts out with only one volunteer from a family signing on, but quickly a second, third or even more of them are cleaning tanks, treating wounds and educating our visitors during tours of the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center. Long-time volunteer Sandy Sly has been working with both our beach program and our hospital since...