Jennifer Frey (Mississippi Museum of Natural Science)

GTC's Mississippi Co-State Representative Jennifer Frey highlights gopher tortoise outreach at Jackson County's Sand Jam 2022.

The Jackson County Recreation Department in South Mississippi hosted its second annual event called SandJam, “Turtle up Mississippi” on June 11th. This year’s event was much bigger so it was held at Pascagoula Beach Park under the shade of the giant live oaks. We had over 800 attendees and one of our translocated tortoises was on WLOX, the local 4 O’clock news show, promoting the event with the organizer Barb Medlock and very pregnant Jennifer Frey. The clip can be seen at https://www.wlox.com/video/2022/06/08/happening-june-sand-jam-pascagoula/. 

The day was full of turtle education including The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) head-starting program at Camp Shelby, the Central Mississippi Turtle Rescue rehab group, NOAA’s turtle hurdle obstacle course, an age-based turtle art competition, turtle themed games, and a host of other organizations with great information such as Plastic Free Gulf Coast and even free fishing and kayaking on the beach adjacent to the park.