Painting day

I love days like today. Today we are painting the Sea Turtle Centre. It was lemony yellow when we moved in. When we are finished, it will be leatherback blue.

It is sunny and windy outside and the Halifax waterfront is full of people—tourists with cameras holding the hands of little kids sticky with ice cream. And locals, who are stretching their arms and legs out in the warm sun watching the clouds skitter by, knowing that this type of day is exactly why we put up with long, icy winters here.

And at our Centre, there are lots of people painting, including volunteers like Lindsay (pictured above) and Laurel who have given up this first taste of summer after so much cold rain to join us. We even had a fisherman named Jake from Cape Breton who stopped by. He had his fishing pole with him, but since the mackerel weren’t biting down in the harbour yet, he picked up a paintbrush to help for a while.

It’s the miracle of people working together to help sea turtles—what an honour and a joy to witness it!

Emily and Kayla

Emily (front) and Laurel

Turtles on the waterfront

The Canadian Sea Turtle Centre is moving to the Halifax waterfront.

After two amazing summers at Peggy’s Cove, our educational centre is migrating downtown, where we will have the chance to talk turtles with even more people. We’ve got great programs for people of all ages planned, including things like turtle crafts and games, interpretive talks on sea turtles, some hands-on jellyfish research, and real-time reports from the field boat.

If you’re in Halifax, come and see us! We’d love to meet you. There is no charge to visit.

We’re working from this small-but-mighty kiosk:

Although there are still pieces to come to make our little space complete, we opened our doors today. We are so excited!

First day! Alex, one of our amazing volunteers, is at the door. Emily, one of our sea turtle interns, is behind the desk. I should mention that BOTH of our sea turtle interns are named Emily this year. Emily F. is in this picture.

Of course it took awhile to get the Turtle Centre together. Before you check out a few snapshots of the process, I have to mention the amazing people at Breakhouse, the design firm that has helped us pack our little space with tons of turtle information while making sure it is also lovely. I’ll be writing more about them and the other friends who have helped us in the coming weeks.

Here are some snapshots of some of our renovation process:

Our temporary signage. The pink poster is for the Gray Line bus tour that drops off and picks up by our Centre. Hope that a lot of the passengers stop in!

The walls inside the Sea Turtle Centre used to be bright yellow, like the outside. Theo, pictured here, is the person who helped us with all of our construction. Theo has been a longtime friend of the Canadian Sea Turtle Network, and when he’s not building houses, he is a fine actor, director and puppeteer.

The office crew: Devan, Kayla and Emily B. (our other sea turtle intern). It bears mentioning that all three of them are scientists by training. In this photograph they are geeking out over our cash register program and all the different ways it can present data. They truly appreciate a good spreadsheet!

This is a photo of Kayla helping figure out how to set up our sales display. Kayla has been an amazing project manager for the Sea Turtle Centre–an impressive feat particularly because of the number of moving parts to this adventure. As you can see we are selling a few things at the Centre. 100% of our profits are used to help fund our research and community outreach programs.

Emily, Kayla, Emily and Alex starting to work out the placement of our educational panels.

What the inside looked like two nights ago…almost ready! Just waiting for the amazing, but more delicate, sea turtle specimens to be installed, like the bones of a leatherback flipper. We kept those items until the last so as not to risk damaging them.

So come and visit! (Bring your friends!)