Gulf Specimen Marine Lab will release a sea turtle at Bald Point on Thursday

 A long-time resident of the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab in Panacea be released into the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow.

Gulf Specimen's educational loggerhead sea turtle named "Little Girl" has been a resident the aquarium since 2007.

She came from the National Marine Fishery Service's Sea Turtle Head Start program in Galveston, Texas where she was part of a program to test the efficacy of Turtle Excluder Devices in shrimp nets.

She was hatched in 2005 and arrived at Gulf Specimen in Sept 2007 when she was just over a foot long and weighed just over 12 pounds.

She is now over 2 feet long and weighs nearly 82 lbs. and is now considered a Sub-Adult so she can be released in the wild. 

Over the past 9 years she has been seen by over 180,000 visitors at the aquarium.

If you want to say good-bye to little girl, you can come to the release.

She will be released at Bald Point State Park on Thursday December 29^th at 3 PM.

For more information contact Gulf Specimen Marine Lab at 984-5297.

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