Local Volunteers Making Waves
By late October on the Grand Strand, the nesting season for sea turtles has typically come to an end. Female loggerheads have come ashore starting in May to dig their nests deep in the sand before depositing up to 120 eggs per nest, where they incubate for roughly 60 days. The hatchlings typically emerge from these nests starting in late July. Often guided by the moonlight, they take their first steps toward the ocean.
But this “circle of life” scenario can be fraught with danger. Hatchlings are vulnerable to natural predators and human-related threats such as artificial lighting, beach obstacles, development and more.
These ancient and charismatic animals need all the protection they can get.
Enter South Carolina United Turtle Enthusiasts (SCUTE) - a volunteer-led, non-profit conservation group in Coastal South Carolina, permitted by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) to protect sea turtle nests, monitor nesting beaches, and educate the public.
Founded in 1990, SCUTE began on Pawleys Island but has since proliferated. It now operates along 13 beaches from North Myrtle Beach to DeBordieu Island in Horry and Georgetown Counties.
A small army of leaders, volunteers, and allies are at the forefront, giving of their time and resources to champion these magnificent creatures. Now is your chance to meet them and the symbols of ocean conservation that they protect.
Rick Scott talks turtles at South Litchfield.
Twelve years ago, Rick Scott and wife Cathy Scott were walking down the street in their Pawleys Island neighborhood and spotted a neighbor they hadn’t met yet.
“We said, ‘Isn’t that the turtle lady?’ We went and introduced ourselves,” Scott says, adding that the woman turned out to be Mary Schneider, longtime coordinator of SCUTE’s conservation efforts on Pawleys Island.
They are still neighbors.
“The next thing I know, we’re walking [the beach] as volunteers – and the next thing I know after that, we’re over a beach [South Litchfield],” he says.
For Scott, those early walks were eye-opening.
“We didn’t even know what we’re looking for. And all of a sudden we come up on this turtle crawl and we see just how big these turtles are,” Scott says. I mean, they’re 300 pounds apiece – and we see the nest that they’ve laid.”
The first step in the protection piece, according to Scott, is to set down a plastic screen and to surround the perimeter of the nest with rope and signage, keeping the site secure until the turtles hatch.
After hatching comes an inventory – usually open to the public.
“We’ll go in and open the nest and count the number of hatchlings and the number of shells that are broken,” he says. “Sometimes there are baby turtles left at the bottom of the nest and we let those out.”
Invariably a crowd has gathered, and Scott says it can be 100 people or more.
Before the hatching, one egg from every nest is removed for DNA analysis. Scott says this allows them to know where the turtles have been, where they came from, what nests they laid and what beaches they have been on.
“There’s a DNA number assigned to every turtle that comes up on the beach,” he says, and a sobering statistic from Scott is that only one in 1,000 sea turtles are estimated to survive each season.
Over time, Scott became close to Jeff McClary, who co-founded SCUTE along with Chris Marlow in 1990 in response to the need for better protection of sea turtles nesting along Pawleys Island and surrounding South Carolina beaches. Marlow died in 2000. When McClary passed in 2023, Scott took over as head of the organization.
For Scott, SCUTE volunteers are the backbone of the organization. With 13 beaches represented, he puts that number north of 350 people.
“They’re walking the beaches at sunrise from May first through October,” he says. “Some of them are out there every day, some of them are out there once a week and some of them are out there just when they get called to come. We ask each volunteer to commit to just one day a week for their sunrise walk.”
Mary Schneider helps a struggling hatchling get closer to the water.
In October 2025, Mary Schneider was presented with a Lifetime Volunteer Award by SCDNR – recognizing her stewardship and protection of South Carolina’s sea turtles.
If you try to congratulate Schneider, she will be quick to mention that it was a team effort.
Indeed, Schneider has been a part of the SCUTE team for 32 years. Currently the coordinator for Pawleys Island, she pointed out that each little segment on a turtle’s shell is called a scute – a fitting acronym for the organization.
“I’m responsible for the volunteers that patrol and walk Pawleys Island,” she says. “That’s about a four-mile beach and we have over 50 volunteers. They’re all year-round residents.”
Schneider, a former schoolteacher from Tennessee, became enamored of sea turtles from the first time she saw them nesting in the late 1960s.
“My family had a house on the north end of Pawleys and we saw tracks,” she says. “When my husband (Phil Schneider) and I moved here from Virginia in ’94, I heard that there was an organization that was working to protect the sea turtle nests and I wanted to get involved right away.”
For Schneider, a turtle crawl is something to behold.
“It’s beautiful,” says Schneider. “Some animal came up out of the water and made these tracks and made what we call a body pit [the large depression a female turtle digs in the sand during nesting]. That is fascinating. At that time, they weren’t protected. People were digging up the eggs to use them for cooking. I didn’t like that idea. That was considered acceptable. It’s not anymore.”
As a result of such stewardship, the numbers tell the story.
“For about 10 years, we were feeling good if we had 10 nests on the beach at any season. But as a result of protecting those nests and the mothers coming back or the females coming back to where they were hatched, we are getting more and more turtles coming back,” she says. “We have 49 nests on Pawleys now. That is a record for us.”
Schneider cites the sense of camaraderie and purpose at play with the folks involved.
“When we have public inventories, walkers come and help out, especially if we have to release some hatchlings,” says Schneider. “They help keep the crowd under control — but they all have a real desire to spend a morning on the beach at six o’clock when the sun’s coming up, and that’s beautiful. More people should do that, but don’t interfere with turtle walkers.”
Throughout his career, Mike Walker has held several positions within the South Carolina State Park system. He is currently an interpretive ranger at Huntington Beach State Park in Murrells Inlet.
“I’m one-third teacher, one-third zookeeper and one-third wildlife biologist,” Walker says. “I’m responsible for the educational programs in the park. I’m at the Nature Center and I’m in charge of natural resource management in the park. I do history as well.”
You might have seen Walker interpreting the history of Atalaya Castle for visitors.
Walker got into this career because of sea turtles. When he was pursuing his marine biology degree at the University of South Carolina, he worked on Pritchards Island – an uninhabited island in Beaufort County owned by the university and used for research and conservation. He says his work involved thwarting the raccoons that stalked sea turtles.
“[The racoons] were eating the eggs as the turtles were laying them.”
Part of the solution was for the university to employ three students over the summers to live on the island and patrol the beach all night.
Because Walker’s work is so diverse, much of the time spent protecting loggerheads is done on a volunteer basis — falling outside of his regular work hours.
“I’ve always considered ourselves part of the SCUTE network, but here at the park, most of our volunteers are members of the Friends of Huntington Beach State Park,” he says. “I’m the [SCDNR Marine Turtle] permit holder for the park, so each beach has a different permit holder.”
The volunteers typically start walking the beach at 6:30 a.m. – looking for tracks and signs of nests, which they report to Walker or staff.
Inventories are generally scheduled as public events and take place in the evenings three days after a major hatch as required by SCDNR.
“They want half to come out of the nest on their own if possible,” Walker says. “After three days we’re allowed to dig up the nest, count how many eggs hatch, and how many bits. If there are any live hatchlings, we’ll release them at that time. If there are any dead hatchlings, we will take a tissue sample from them that they will use for additional DNA work.”
For Walker, keeping the beach dark is a key component of turtle conservation.
“The best thing to do for the turtles is to stay off the beach and keep the beach dark at night. That is critically important. I fear that in some areas people are inadvertently scaring turtles off the beach by trying to observe them.”
Vickki Hardwick (left) and Terry Graham (right) on a turtle release after it was rehabilitated at the Sea Turtle Care Center.
Terry Graham, SCUTE coordinator for Garden City/Surfside, has been actively involved with sea turtle programs for 19 years. Her co-coordinator is Vanessa Smith.
Originally from Lake Chautauqua, N.Y., Graham first moved to Murrells Inlet in the 1970s, and again in 1983.
She says Mary Schneider was her mentor for many years along with SCUTE cofounder McClary. Cofounder Marlow passed before she started.
“I hold the primary nesting permit for the two beaches and also a stranding permit,” she says.
A stranding permit, also issued by SCDNR, allows a person or organization to assist in marine turtle stranding response activities. These include locating, documenting, transporting, reporting stranded turtles and more.
“I have a huge passion for our sick and injured sea turtles,” says Graham. “When a sick or injured turtle comes up on shore – maybe from a boat strike or they get hooked on the piers – it’s reported to DNR and they call me or Vickki Hardwick [another permit holder]. We assess the turtle, put it in our cars and drive to Charleston with it to the South Carolina Aquarium, where they have an unbelievable hospital to rehabilitate turtles.”
Graham is referring to the Zucker Family Sea Turtle Recovery Care Center, where such turtles are brought in for immediate triage – and Graham’s focus for fundraisers she frequently hosts. Graham, also an artist, donates the proceeds from the pieces she sells at Pawleys Island General Store to the Turtle Care Center.
Graham has 50 volunteers on her team, 12 of whom are LOAs.
“They have letters of authorization that they can work in a nest,” she says. “They can handle eggs and hatchlings – and I give them a permit every year to do that off of my permit.”
Graham says she is happiest when she’s digging in the sand or digging into a nest — either moving eggs or doing an inventory.
“I’ve got sand all over me and it’s the most wonderful feeling – and I have the most wonderful team. If I need one of them, all I have to do is send a group text out and they come running.”
SCDNR’s Michelle Pate with a nest on North Island (part of the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center in Georgetown County).
Michelle Pate’s connection with sea turtles began more than 20 years ago when she was on a trip with the South Carolina Wildlife Federation.
“I was living in Columbia and got the opportunity to go for a weekend trip to Pritchards Island back when they had a facility and dorm on the property. That was the first time I really got to engage with sea turtles – and it kind of hooked me,” she says. “I started traveling from Columbia to Charleston to volunteer before I actually moved back here to attend graduate school.”
Pate holds both a BS in Biology and a MS in Environmental Studies from the College of Charleston. She is currently the coordinator for SCDNR’s Marine Turtle Conservation Program – overseeing the program for the state.
The program manages, protects and researches all sea turtle species in the state, working with volunteers, the public and partner agencies to ensure their survival.
“Some of the most well-recognized aspects are the nest protection network and our stranding network,” Pate says, both of which are volunteer driven.
As we have seen with Graham, some volunteers are involved with both networks. Pate puts the volunteer count at 1,100 to 1,500 people, based on reports from team leaders — with a core volunteer group of 400-450.
Once a year, team leaders go through in-person training.
“They have to be in good standing to be invited back each year – and some folks have been working with us for decades. We like to see that there are folks that are knowledgeable and experienced and that there’s a continuity in data and how its acquired. We were utilizing civilian scientists before the term was coined.”
Pate considers the volunteer networks to be the greatest assets to the program.
“We just have a staff of four, and we can’t be everywhere all the time along our coast,” she says. “We rely on them heavily to get the conservation work done that we are doing.”
Tanya Ackerman is an award-winning photojournalist and longtime Pawleys Island resident. She’s the owner of Chasing the Light Studio, and her work has been published in three books: Pawleys Island: Chasing the Light (2016), Pawleys Island: Seasons of Light (2020), and Pawleys Island: Reflections of Light (2026).
Ackerman’s first encounters with SCUTE were in relation to her coverage as a photojournalist for Pawleys Island at the Coastal Observer, a local newspaper serving Georgetown County.
“They’re just amazing people,” she says, referring to the dedication of SCUTE members – including Scott and Schneider. “While everyone is sleeping and tucked into their beds, they’re up getting coffee at five in the morning and going out at sunrise. They do inventories and public outreach.”
Over the years, Ackerman has shot thousands of images around SCUTE events and of the turtles themselves.
“I love everything about the sea turtles,” she says. “It’s just amazing to document their journeys. We’re having a record season this year. Last count was 49 nests and the record was 39. How exciting to photograph and to be a part of such a historic year.”
One turtle photo op came at just the right moment.
“I have one that people love,” she says. “This one looks like it’s smiling and waving because it’s leaving.”
If you discover a dead or injured sea turtle, call 1-800-922-5431
SOURCE: SCDNR
Find SCUTE on Facebook or Google “South Carolina United Turtle Enthusiasts.” For questions or to volunteer, email welovescute@outlook.com or call (843) 237-1537.
For more about the South Carolina Marine Turtle Conservation Program, visit www.dnr.sc.gov/seaturtle
