Mote-ivational Science Lecture: Dr. Jake Lasala

The subject is 44 years of nightly beach patrol. Dr. Jake Lasala runs Mote's Sea Turtle Conservation & Research Program, which has walked the 35 miles of sand from Longboat Key to Venice every nesting-season morning since 1982, logging more than 133,000 crawls and an estimated 3.4 million hatchlings. His own research uses genetic sampling of nesting females and their clutches to work out mating systems and whether individual turtles are changing their behavior over time, work done in the field at night with a corps of roughly 300 trained volunteers. The talk is part of Mote's Mote-ivational Science Lecture series, with a reception beforehand and a chance to put questions to him directly.