Christine Suter conducted her internship with the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society (AMSEAS) based in Hampton Bays, New York, where she analyzed data on sea turtle strandings in the coastal waters of New York for the years 2010, 2012 and 2016. Her goals were to establish a procedure for analyzing the data, provide a baseline from which data in prior and subsequent years could be compared, and to identify trends relating to debris ingestion and entanglement within and between the three years observed. Most of the debris-related strandings she reviewed involved loggerhead turtles that had ingested soft plastic debris and latex balloon fragments, while most of the entanglement-related strandings involved leatherback turtles that had become entangled in lines from pot fisheries. In addition to analyzing the strandings data, Christine attended a series of necropsy training sessions with AMSEAS and assisted with several marine mammal and sea turtle necropsies throughout the summer.
Christine Suter (MA, 2020)
