“Doc” Ehrhart wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty — or bitten — or stung — or wrapped around an ornery rattlesnake.
He’d often joke: “ “I’m not any good with computers, but if you ever need someone to free-hand a rattlesnake, or skin a skunk without puncturing the scent gland… I’m your guy.’ “
But it was the mysterious, giant gentle turtles nesting near NASA’s Cape Canaveral launch pads that most peaked Llew “Doc” Ehrhart’s curious nature and captured his imagination as a young scientist in the 1970s.
Known internationally for his long-term sea turtle research and advocacy, Llewellyn (Llew) Ehrhart Jr., “Doc” as most knew him, died at his Oviedo home on March 3. He was 79.
He was preceded in death by his beloved wife of 53 years, Carol. He is survived by his twin daughters, Ashley Ehrhart, of Oviedo, and Samantha “Mandy” Silver (husband Andrew), of Winter Springs.
In a life spent digging in the dunes, the eggs that Ehrhart unearthed revealed deeper truths about the threatened and endangered sea turtles that begin their journeys here, more so than anywhere else on Earth. They were his passion, his life’s journey, and his mission to save.
The professor emeritus at University of Central Florida would have turned 80 on April 22 — Earth Day, a fitting birthday according those who knew him and see his legacy as unparalleled in sea turtle conservation biology.
A naturalist of the old-school variety, Ehrhart’s unprecedented data proved that sea turtles nest on the Space Coast like nowhere else. He pieced together groundbreaking research into how many sea turtles nest along the Brevard County and Indian River County coastline and why, laying the scientific groundwork that led to establishment of the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge in 1991.
Many consider the refuge, which spans 20.5 miles from Melbourne Beach to Wabasso Beach along Florida’s east coast, as his greatest achievement. But it was the students he mentored who rose the ranks of sea turtle conservation biology that “Doc” and countless others consider his greatest legacy.
His footprints stretched far and wide along eastern Florida’s beaches, but the imprint on those he mentored went much deeper and wider.
“Dad was so proud, he really considered among his greatest accomplishments all the people he taught,” his daughter, Ashley Ehrhart, of Oviedo, said. “He wasn’t like a big political guy, but he was instrumental,” she said of his role in establishing the Carr refuge.
Small-town Pennsylvania boy becomes big-time biologist
Born April 22, 1942 in Dallastown, a central Pennsylvania town with a population of about 3,000.
A son of small-town grocery store owners, Doc met Carol at church camp when they were 13 years old, and they married upon his graduation from Franklin & Marshall College in Central Pennsylvania.
They then moved to Ithaca, New York, where Doc pursued his PhD in zoology at Cornell University.
He’d make numerous trips to Florida. His dissertation focused on Florida mice. Doc would bring mice back to Ithaca in shoe boxes for his studies, as was common in the ’60s.
As he neared graduation, a friend called to see if he was interested in a position as a mammologist at a new university in Orlando. He took the job at Florida Technological University, which would become UCF, a year after it opened its doors in 1968.
But Doc’s conservation journey began in earnest in the early 1970s at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, searching for skunks, shrews, mice and other small mammals where the space agency had planned to pave the Space Shuttle landing strip. In 1972, he received NASA funding to study vertebrate ecology at KSC. He lured a fellow graduate student from Cornell, Franklin “Buck” Snelson, whose doctoral research focused on fish, to join him on the faculty at FTU and on the KSC research.
No creature was too small, no task too small, or too big.
While his main job was live-trapping rats and other vermin near KSC’s two main launch pads, the strange huge-shelled creatures on the beach soon caught his curious eye. One day in 1973, while at the headquarters of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, the refuge biologist, Jim Baker, told Doc he’d seen sea turtles nesting out on KSC’s beach.
To Ehrhart’s surprise, no one was studying sea turtle nesting on NASA’s property. Almost nothing was known about their behaviors.
So he and his students began collecting data about sea turtle nesting habits, monitoring nests late at night and at the crack of dawn to avoid the hottest parts of summer days in Brevard, just like nesting and hatching turtles do.
“It’s hard work,” Ann Marie Lauritsen, a biologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Falls Church, Virginia, recalls of her days as Ehrhart’s students in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She’d later become southeast sea turtle coordinator for USFWS, and now is in the agency’s division of international affairs.
“It was not easy, but it was just immersing ourselves in the biology of turtles and truly understanding the species and creating a sense of awe,” Lauritsen recalls of Ehrhart infectious enthusiasm. ” ‘Doc’ was pivotal in terms of inspiring curiosity about the species and an interest in learning more. He did that for all of his students that worked for him.”
That enthusiasm never waned. He was going out netting turtles right before COVID, she added.
“It was about getting out there and seeing the species,” Lauritsen said. “He really reached everyone where they were. His footprints extended widely.”
Doc’s data would prove that female sea turtles return to their their natal beaches to nest, highlighting the urgency of protecting those beaches.
His team tagged one leatherback sea turtle named “China Girl” in 1994, for example, and the turtle returned every two to three years to nest in the Archie Carr Refuge for more than two decades.
Doc was also the first to net juvenile green sea turtles in the Indian River Lagoon, for long-term catch-release research. Those studies discovered green turtles in the lagoon weighing up to 130 pounds and many with odd tumors caused by viral infections.
From Canaveral National Seashore to Melbourne Beach
Ehrhart’s research began to shift southward, to the area that’s now the Carr refuge, after an ambitious graduate student in his group, Paul Raymond, found a way to fund his Master’s degree research by moving south to Brevard County where officials wanted to understand the impact of beach renourishment on sea turtle nesting.
Raymond was seeing more turtles there in one night than in a month in the area around KSC.
The long-term research Ehrhart’s group would prove the 20-mile stretch of beach South Brevard had the densest sea turtle nesting for green turtles in the western hemisphere.
He and his students would also shed light on how beach lights disoriented countless sea turtle hatchlings, leading to Brevard County in 1985 enacting the state’s first ordinance to limit beach lighting during turtle nesting season.
His science soon showed the green sea turtle was so far gone in Florida, he feared they’d never bounce back. He knew it was possible, though, and ultimately helped make it happen. Greens grew back like compound interest.
“He called that among the greatest conservation success stories ever,” Ashley Ehrhart said.
Piecing together Carr refuge
As a young director of Brevard’s new Environmentally Endangered Lands Program in the early 1990s, Duane DeFreese worked with Doc to piece together the lands that government would buy for the Carr refuge.
Doc’s enthusiasm for scientific field work was infectious, said DeFreese, now executive director of the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program. “I think that is why so many of his students stayed in the career path.”
Blair Witherington was among those students.
As an undergrad at UCF, Witherington was more interested in fish, but he soon would catch Doc’s infectious enthusiasm for turtles. Witherington would go on to earn a PhD, work for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute and become an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Florida.
“‘Doc had the big picture in mind,” Witherington said of his turtle research. “He told their story. They are fascinating animals. They were obscure to some extent. It’s hard to love them unless you know them.”
Doc’s research helped prove that sea turtle nesting at the Carr refuge mirrored nesting statewide, Witherington said.
Barbara Schroeder, national sea turtle coordinator for NOAA Fisheries, is among the many students inspired by Ehrhart’s enthusiasm for “everything around us in the natural world.”
“I think that legacy will live on,” Schroeder said. “He was just such a joy to be out in the field with. Anytime you’re working in the field you’re subject to whatever comes your way. He never panicked about anything. He was very measured and calm. Even though he was a giant in the sea turtle world, he always had time for any student.”
“He was an extraordinary man and an extraordinary friend,” DeFreese said. “His shoes will never be filled.”
Turn out your beach lights
Beachside homes and businesses must turn out or shade their lights during sea turtle nesting season, which runs from Sea turtle nesting season officially begins March 1 for the Atlantic coast of Florida. Brevard County has a “lights-out” ordinance effective May 1 to Oct. 31 that requires all lights visible from the beach to be either covered, blocked, moved, or turned off from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. This includes flashlights, cellphones, and red lights. Although sea turtles are less affected by red light, they do still see it.
Source: https://seaturtlespacecoast.org/
Jim Waymer is an environment reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Waymer at 321-261-5903 or [email protected]. Or find him on Twitter: @JWayEnviro or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/jim.waymer
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