Hanging up her flippers: Topsail sea turtle rescue founder retires - StarNewsOnline.com

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Emma Dill   | Wilmington StarNews

Jean Beasley has been looking after Topsail Island's sea turtles for more than 50 years. 

Beasley, 85, is the founder and longtime executive director of Surf City's Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.

She first came to Topsail Island in 1958 and visited throughout the years before moving to the area permanently in the mid-1970s. It was on Topsail Island that Jean and her daughter Karen saw the need for a program to care for the area's sea turtles.

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The two formed the Topsail Turtle Project, which helped protect turtle nests and hatchlings as they made their way into the ocean.

Things only grew from there, Jean Beasley said. 

Jean Beasley continued their work with the area's turtles after Karen Beasley died at the age of 29 from leukemia. 

Jean Beasley founded the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, which organized as a nonprofit in 1997. In 2013, the center opened its current facility in Surf City, which is one of Jean Beasley's favorite memories. 

The center had humble beginnings, Jean Beasley said.

“We had no money when we started,” she said. “When I didn’t have enough fish for the turtles, I fished from the dock.”

She said she has thousands of memories of her time at the turtle rescue. "Every one of them special,” she added.

But at age 85, Jean Beasley has decided that it's time to give the responsibility of leading and overseeing the center to someone else. She will continue to chair the organization's board of directors for the next few months and will remain involved with the center, she said.

“I will always continue to have a special place in my heart for sea turtles, without question,” she added.

Kathy Zagzebski started as the center's new executive director last week. She spent her first few days learning the ropes. 

“It's definitely a big learning process,” Zagzebski said.

Before coming to Surf City, Zagzebski led the National Marine Wildlife Center located near Cape Cod in Massachusetts. That's where she came to love sea turtles and learned how to rehabilitate them, she said.

Over her career, Zagzebski has worked with a range of marine animals, including dolphins, sea lions and seals. She was drawn to marine animals while completing a master's degree in coastal environmental management at Duke University.

“There’s that element of the mysterious about them,” she said. “They’re fascinating animals and they’re not that easy to see.”

Zagzebski expects to encounter more of a range of turtles in her new position. In Massachusetts, her organization typically treated just one species and age group. The Karen Beasley Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center treats a range of species, sizes and ages. The center is currently caring for 38 turtles.

“Our smallest animal is less than 100 grams, and our biggest animal is over 300 pounds,” she said.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has closed the center to the public, Zagzebski is optimistic that the center may open to limited tours this spring. She also wants to use social media to bring people behind the scenes at the center.

Moving forward, Zagzebski said the center will largely remain the same, but she hopes to expand the center's education efforts and efforts to use science to protect turtles.

In her retirement, Jean Beasley said she plans to relax. She also wants to write a book of stories from the center's early days. She will continue to live by the mantra she's learned from the turtles: Just keep swimming.

Jean Beasley recognizes that it is time to let someone else oversee the center that she founded and oversaw for more than 20 years.

“I am 85, and at 85 you really don’t have the energy that you have when you’re 50,” she said. “There comes a time when you have to hang up your flippers.”

Reporter Emma Dill can be reached at 910-343-2096 or edill@gannett.com.

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February 08, 2021 at 08:48PM
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Hanging up her flippers: Topsail sea turtle rescue founder retires - StarNewsOnline.com

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