Sea Turtle Oversight Protection

About Us

We are all volunteers. Regular people from all walks of life who have chosen to make a difference.

For five to eight months out of the year, we re-arrange our lives to save disoriented sea turtle hatchlings. Sea Turtle People have to be a little crazy to get through the long nights, but the dedication of our volunteer staff is second to none.

Being a STOP volunteer is the toughest job you will ever love.

Our Mission

Our program has reduced the hatchling mortality rate by almost 50% in Broward County!

We aim to provide a solution to a complex problem, to create awareness through education, to balance the scales and give the hatchlings a chance to begin their life.

What Is STOP?

Incorrect coastal lighting causes sea turtle hatchlings to go towards the City instead of to the sea!
STOP is a non-profit sea turtle conservation organization made up of local volunteers who conduct nighttime nest surveys and monitoring to rescue and release disoriented sea turtle hatchlings in Broward County, Florida.
STOP rescues disoriented hatchlings as well as sick or injured juvenile and adult marine turtles in all of Broward County Florida; Deerfield Beach, Hillsboro Beach, Pompano, Lauderdale by the Sea, Fort Lauderdale, Dania, Hollywood, and Hallandale.
Our program has reduced the hatchling mortality rate by over 50% in Broward County. Our FWCC certified nighttime survey volunteers monitor sea turtle nests and count the number of hatchlings that emerge. Hatchlings that go east to the ocean are left alone. Hatchlings that disorient to lights are documented and recovered in buckets. Rescued hatchlings are released into the sea or taken to Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton. We record the data with mobile devices in real-time using an app. Since 2007, STOP volunteers have bucketed over 240,000 hatchlings that disoriented to lights on Broward County beaches. However, STOP’s all night, volunteer rescue campaign is not the solution; correct, safe and night-healthy lighting is. Therefore, the focus of our program is to ensure the turtles do not lose their lives until municipalities adhere to and enforce the existing coastal light ordinances, as required by the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Turtle Protection Act.
We help to educate the public by hosting sea turtle nesting habitat awareness and lighting workshops and offer presentations to schools, organizations and local businesses to increase sea turtle awareness. With our feet on the sand, we interact with tens of thousands of beach-goers each year during our nightly campaigns, providing them with helpful tips to avoid being a disturbance while on the nesting habitat. We also provide carefully controlled, guided eco-tours to reduce incidental interactions, that could have negative consequences for the animals.
We aim to provide solutions, to balance the scales and give the hatchlings a chance to begin their life.

Our Beginnings

Sea Turtle Oversight Protection (STOP) was founded in 2007 by the WhiteCloud Family, Richard, Siouxzen and their daughter Teakahla. STOP was the first program of its kind to rescue and release sea turtle hatchlings disoriented by coastal lighting in Broward County. STOP now has the highest number of FWCC Marine Turtle Permitted staff of any organization in Florida!

How STOP Started

Like so many things in life, it just began, without looking for it or even knowing about it.
On an early July morning in 2007, Siouxzen WhiteCloud made her way through the humid darkness to a Deerfield Beach to teach yoga. As she crossed A1A a sight awaited her. It was not a new sight, it had happened a thousand times before, but this time the right person was looking...
Stretched in front of her, covering the four-lane beach road, lifeless in the darkness of the fading night, were hundreds of run over baby loggerhead sea turtles. Following their perfect instinct to go towards the light of the moon and the stars reflecting on the sea, they had poured into A1A pulled west by its glaring street lights and were killed at just a few minutes old.
That day Siouxzen and her husband, Richard, called every sea turtle organization in the country, looking for help, guidance, reasons, answers. And that night they took their three-year-old daughter, Teakahla, and went out on the beach and sat next to a loggerhead sea turtle nest. Of the thousands in Broward County, they could cover at least one. Scheduled to move to New Mexico in two days, they changed their life plans and decided they could not leave Florida until the sea turtle hatchlings of Broward County were safe.
Richard launched into intense research of the coastal lighting problems and infractions, of the shortcomings of the Broward County contractor (under previous mismanagement) assigned to oversee the sea turtle conservation program, and started a grassroots group of volunteers who were willing to not sleep. It took several more summers of walking the beach all night with our red lights, buckets and FWC permit to get to where we are now. It took hundreds and thousands of more baby sea turtle hatchlings dying in streets, parking lots and dune vegetation before S.T.O.P. began to change things. Before we found an amazing network of support and die-hard volunteers. Before we got the attention of FWC, FWS, the news media, national conservation groups, and the world. Before we got our first four infrared night vision cameras and caught in real time the nightly disorientation of sea turtle hatchlings. Before using smartphones to compile volumes of never before collected, real-time data.
But it took much longer than several summers. It took decades before someone said, on the most important loggerhead nesting beach in the world, The endless, nightly slaughter of sea turtle hatchlings on Florida beaches has got to STOP!

Contact

Want to be a part of S.T.O.P.? You want to help?

There are many ways you can help us keep feet on the sand, buckets in hand, and flippers in the sea.