Seven months after their home base in the Florida Panhandle was demolished by Hurricane Michael, U.S. Geological Survey sea turtle researchers are headed back into the field on May 1, the start of nesting season for Florida's sea turtles.
USGS research biologist Margaret Lamont and her four-person team had just wrapped up their field season last October when the hurricane swept through Cape San Blas, part of a peninsula separating St. Joseph Bay from the Gulf of Mexico. When it struck, Michael was classified as a powerful Category 4 storm, but a new analysis by the National Hurricane Center revealed it was actually a Category 5, one of the four most intense hurricanes on record to hit the U.S. Its 160-mph winds and storm surge destroyed Cape San Blas. Lamont lost the house she had used as a research station for 10 years, two pick-up trucks, and four all-terrain vehicles used to access sea turtle nests along several miles of beaches.
The team evacuated before the storm made landfall, quickly saving equipment and years’ worth of data. Since then Lamont has been rebuilding her research program while helping residents of the town where she has worked for almost 25 years.
“We will have a field season. It’ll just be different. We’ll adapt,” she said. “We’ve also focused on joining friends and neighbors and helping to rebuild this community that we have become a part of.”
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Image via USGS.