June 14, 2016 — A part of David Kaplan recognizes that his new research into sea turtle mortality is pushing the envelope.
The assistant professor and his graduate student Bianca Santos are doing something never before attempted: repurposing the carcasses of two dead loggerheads, outfitting them with GPS devices and setting them adrift in the Chesapeake Bay, all in the name of science.
“Most people have not had the reaction that this is disgusting,” Kaplan said Monday morning from the boat basin at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) in Gloucester Point.
“It’d be interesting to see what the public thinks, because I think of it as a really great thing. I mean, it’s pretty gruesome, but it’s taking animals that died tragically and reusing them for the (greater) good. A better purpose.”