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Published Dec 21, 2015 at 11:41 am (Updated Dec 21, 2015 at 11:41 am)

Lynda Johnson of the Bermuda Zoological Society receives a cheque from
Marie-Joelle Chapleau, chief operating officer of Global Indemnity Reinsurance

Efforts to study and promote marine turtles have been boosted by a donation from Global Indemnity Reinsurance.

The Bermuda Zoological Society released a statement thanking the group for a gift towards the community project which has “global implications”.

For more than 16 years, the International Course on the Biology and Conservation of Sea Turtles has served 140 students from the Caribbean and North Atlantic.

According to the press release, the aim of the Bermuda Turtle Project is to further the understanding of the biology of endangered marine turtles, in order to promote their conservation in Bermuda and worldwide.

Bermuda’s immature green turtles have been the focus of a tagging study initiated in 1968 by Dr HC Frick, and is one of the first scientific investigations of this species in their juvenile developmental habitat.

Chief operating officer Marie-Joelle Chapleau stated: “It was with great pleasure that Global Indemnity Re included the BZS in its charitable giving.

“To know that our donation will provide leadership support of the Bermuda Turtle Project is significant, particularly considering the turtle hatching event earlier this year.”

Until this summer there had been no evidence of green turtles nesting in Bermuda since the 1930s, but in August a bounty of almost 90 hatched green sea turtle eggs was discovered at the site of what is believed to be the first on-Island hatchlings for 100 years.

These hatchlings are believed to be the result of a translocation project conducted here between 1968 and 1978 when eggs from Costa Rica were buried on the Island.