Look for Turtle Safe Toy Boxes at the Beach!
Turtle Safe Toy Boxes are designed as "borrow boxes" that allow beach visitors to borrow a toy to use at the beach or leave toys they no longer want.
Leaving behind toys for other children to play with is a great idea! However, they often get washed into water and
subsequently begin to degrade and break into smaller pieces of plastic that can easily be ingested by marine life, including sea turtles. So, one of our Longboat Key Turtle Watch volunteers, Caleb Jameson, designed this toy box to help keep toys from washing into the ocean and endangering sea life. Caleb's boxes are located at 4621 Gulf of Mexico Drive (Casa Del Mar) and 5851 Gulf of Mexico Drive (Cabana Beach Club), Longboat Key, Florida and Lido Beach (Sponsored by the City of Sarasota). The initial funding for these boxes came from grant provided by Klean Kanteen through the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit, as well as donated funds from J. McLaughlin.
Look for more boxes to be deployed soon! If you are interested in sponsoring one of these boxes and having it installed at your property, please email us.
Here is a link to the presentation Caleb gave at the Youth Ocean Conservation Summit 2018 about the Turtle Safe Toy Box: Turtle Safe Toy Box #YOCS2018
Instructional Videos:
Introduction to the Turtle Safe Toy Box
How to build a Turtle Safe Toy Box
How to install a Turtle Safe Toy Box
Media Segments Featuring the Turtle Safe Toy Box:
September 2018 - Your Observer "Teen Helps Turtles with Toy Boxes"
August 2019 - Your Observer "Teen's Sarasota Beach Project Thinks Inside the Box"
August 2019 - WFTS ABC Action News with Sean Daly
September 2019 - ABC's The List
September 2021 - Your Observer "Turtle Safe Toy Box Lands at Cabana Beach Club on Longboat Key"
