Turtle Patrol’s ATV Is Stolen and Building Vandalized in Latest in Series of Criminal Mischief Incidents in Marineland

Sometime between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Wednesday, thieves broke into a shed behind the building known as the Marineland Coastal Policy Center where the Volusia-Flagler Turtle Patrol keeps an office, used a fire extinguisher to vandalize the interiors of the building, stole a computer tablet used to document turtle nesting, and stole the Patrol’s ATV out of the shed, which they also vandalized. 

“They kind of ransacked it,” the Turtle Patrol’s Lori Ottlein said, “they broke the window to get in, but there isn’t much in there. Wooden stakes, ribbons, markers, gas, and they destroyed the shelves and threw all the equipment around. And they went into the main building.” 

For the Turtle Patrol, the ATV is essential for daily morning patrols in Marineland and Summer Haven in an area of the beach that straddles the Flagler-St. Johns county line. A segment of rocky beach prevents ATVs from crossing from north to south of Marineland, which makes it essentially impossible for the Turtle Patrol to use its other ATVs to patrol the Marineland-Summer Haven area.

That patrol was conducted today on foot. “Right now with no ATV and no way to get on the beach, we’re going to have to do walking patrol, Ottlein said. “It’s a lot of work, and walking is not the way to do it.”  Especially this season, which has been “crazy with turtle nesting.” Some 250 more nests than usual have been documented, with a total of 600 in Flagler County alone, from Snack Jack’s to Washington Oaks Gardens State Park. (The Summer Haven-Marineland segment is run by the Volusia portion of the Turtle Patrol.) 

Some 20 volunteers, in teams of two, patrol every morning, starting at dawn. It can take a few hours, or, depending on the number of nests to be documented, it can take until early afternoon. The nesting is documented with tablets and the information forwarded to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). Ottlein said that all the information on the stolen tablet had been sent already, and backed up. 

The ATV is valued at between $8,000 and $13,000, Ottlein said. The Turtle Patrol is a volunteer nonprofit organization. It does not have the sort of money than can readily make up such a loss. The Patrol is offering a $1,000 reward for information that leads to the recovery of the ATV, and is soliciting donations. 

The ATV stolen is a camouflage-colored Kawasaki Brute Force 750 with a marked Turtle Patrol pine box built on its rear to carry the marking sticks the patrol uses to identify and protect nesting turtles. The box is of course easily removable by anyone looking to make the ATV less identifiable. 

In Flagler County, the Patrol has three other ATVs–in Flagler Beach, at Malacompra Road and Jungle Hut Road, plus a spare that isn’t very usable. “The problem with the spare one is it doesn’t always work, it’s very old, and I wouldn’t even call it usable,” Ottlein said, “because if you get stuck on the beach, nobody is coming to get you. So we really don’t use it. We always have to have reliable equipment.” 

For Marineland, a town with an official population of three but a professional population of scores who work there–at the GTM Research Reserve, at the University of Florida’s Whitney Lab, at the town marina, at the dolphin attraction–the break-in is “the latest in a series,” as Marineland Town Commissioner Jessica Finch put it, “the last occurring on Memorial Day, when the two young perpetrators were caught because Buddy and I were out for a walk and I was able to get a picture of their license plate.” Finch was referring to Buddy Pinder, the mayor of Marineland. “It is just a terrible thing to be happening here.” 

Beth Libert, who leads the Turtle Patrol, alerted Scott Eastman of the Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection of a break-in in the same building a week before Memorial Day. 

“One time they threw a brick through the office window,” Ottlein said. “The next time they stole a microwave. Now they broke into our shed by breaking the window of the shed’ reaching in and opening the shed from inside.” The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office is investigating, Ottlein said. The Sheriff’s Office had not responded to a request for an incident report before this article initially published, though the report would likely not have more information than what Turtle Patrol volunteers are providing. 

The Coastal Policy Center building sits on a 15.5-acre parcel owned by JDI Marineland, the corporate entity co-owned by Atlanta developer Jim Jacoby, who owns all but two of the privately owned parcels in Marineland (one of them being the Dolphin Adventure.) “I think he doesn’t want anybody else in there, he’s just going to chain the doors to where we don’t have anybody,” Pinder, the mayor, said in a voice mail to Eastman. He said the two alleged vandals apprehended around Memorial Day told authorities they had an app that directed them to vacant or abandoned buildings. 

The Marineland Town Commission is holding its monthly meeting at 6 this evening at the GTM Research Reserve building a short distance from the Coastal Policy Center. Commissioners will likely discuss what, bewilderingly for a town like Marineland, could fairly be called a crime spree. Ottlein said “kids” are being blamed. “They’re bad kids right there, if they’re kids,” she said.