A Weekday Adventure: NOAA's Turtle Barn in Galveston

Last week, we all headed down to Galveston to take a tour of NOAA's turtle barn. We had been trying to get (free) tickets for a tour for over a year, but the tour times book up months in advance and are only offered on Thursdays, so they are hard to come by. Gene was able to take the day off work, and we were so glad he could join us for the turtle adventure!

We arrived in Galveston just in time for lunch. We chose the Rainforest Cafe for this visit, even though it's incredibly kitschy and commercialized. The boys loved it and the food was actually pretty good too!  

The Turtle Tour starts at the NOAA Fisheries main campus with a 30 minute turtle talk. We already know quite a lot about turtles because of Henry's fascination with them, but we found the talk informative nevertheless. 

There are two turtle barns at the NOAA facility. One houses injured turtles, and the other is used for research. Loggerheads are raised and then released in Florida where they help test TEDs (turtle excluder devices). All sea turtles are endangered and fishing lines have been a big problem for the reptiles. TEDs are specialized devices that allow sea turtles to escape from a fishing net.  

The boys got to test out a TED. 

Inside the barn we saw one- and two-year old turtles. 

One-year-olds

Two-year-old loggerheads are the same size as full-grown Kemp's Ridleys, so they are the perfect size to test TEDs.

This boy was in heaven.

We ended our time in Galveston at LaKing's, for ice cream and taffy, as usual.

Visiting the turtle barn was a remarkable experience and we are so glad we finally were able to schedule a tour.