UF graduate student studying turtle movement patterns to decrease boat strikes

The state of Florida sees more stranded turtles washing up on beaches due to vessel strikes than anywhere else in the United States. According to a 2025 study, Florida and Texas lead the country in collisions between turtles and boats. 

University of Florida graduate student Aileen Lavelle wants to understand why.

Lavelle has been in Juno Beach at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center placing satellite tags on turtles since April, and she will continue studying sea turtle movement patterns through June. 

She is placing tags on loggerhead and green turtles but will also study leatherback turtles. Lavelle and Loggerhead Marinelife Center employees scan the beach from roughly 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., or later, as they wait for good candidates. Once they find them, they prop up walls around the turtle, clean a portion of the shell and stick a small rectangular transmitter to the turtle before letting it dry and releasing it. 

It can take an hour or two for each satellite tag, so they may only place a few transmitters in a given night. Tags can stay on a turtle around a year and send data every time it surfaces.

By studying the three species of turtles that nest the most in Florida, Lavelle hopes to identify where and when boat strikes are most likely to occur  along the state’s coasts.

“We're not getting the whole idea of how many turtles are truly getting struck because most of the time we think that their carcasses will sink to the bottom of the ocean,” Lavelle said. “We have thousands of adult turtles that are washing ashore, deceased from vessel strike injuries, and we’re trying to understand where these hotspots are happening.”

UF’s Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research, or ACCSTR, previously collaborated with the Loggerhead Marinelife Center — a nonprofit sea turtle research, rehabilitation, education and conservation facility — to establish a Sea Turtle Protection Zone in 2021. From March 1 to Oct. 31, boaters are encouraged to reduce travel time and travel at minimum speeds in the area that encompasses all 45 miles of Palm Beach County, from shore to 1 mile offshore. 

Lavelle, who is a graduate student with the ACCSTR, said the Loggerhead Marinelife Center is spreading the word about the zone and working to understand boaters’ willingness to slow down in the voluntary area. But understanding the turtles’ movements in the water also could help protect them.

In addition to tagging turtles, Lavelle is reviewing a decade of boat traffic patterns and evaluating if people are reducing their speed. According to a 2024 National Marine Manufacturers Association report released in October, Florida led the nation with 1.2 million boat registrations, which was 10% of total US registrations.

“I'd like my work to inform the timing and efficacy of the Sea Turtle Protection Zone,” Lavelle said. “I'm hoping to give more granular data to the folks at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center. Their main goal is conservation of sea turtles, and vessel strikes have grown to be the single greatest cause of lethal stranding in Florida.”

Sarah Hirsch, the director of research with the facility, stressed the importance of satellite telemetry in their work. Among other studies, the institution uses satellite trackers to look at how many nests turtles lay in order to better understand the population size.

Lavelle is collaborating with the center and contributing to its efforts while also expanding her own skillset. The facility already planned on attaching trackers to turtles, but Lavelle’s involvement allows her to learn how to do the work herself and provide more information than the center originally intended to study

She previously interned with the center in 2021 after completing undergraduate school. Now that she has completed her master’s degree and is pursuing a Ph.D. at UF, she has developed her skills and applied her knowledge through fieldwork.

Hirsch said Lavelle is “coming back full circle and using the beaches here at Loggerhead for her research, so it's really nice to reconnect, see how she's grown through that and continue to help her on her journey.”

UF Associate Professor and Director of the ACCSTR Hannah Vander Zanden, Ph.D., said Lavelle’s fieldwork will accurately characterize the risk sea turtles face in that area. But the established connection between the ACCSTR and the Loggerhead Marinelife Center also helpsLavelle build her skills and gain valuable experience.