July 30, 2020 By Annemarie Mannion Hakai Magazine
Sea turtles became an unexpected passion for Jones, who now often wears sea turtle T-shirts or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (TMNT) garb instead of his old Florida Gators shirts. (The TMNTs aren’t sea turtles, but Jones’s link to the superheroes is irresistible: the human vigilante who fought alongside them was also named Casey Jones.) He began searching for ways to help conserve the reptiles, which is how he learned about a pervasive and preventable risk to their well-being: light pollution. Artificial bright lights are a deadly hazard that can lead sea turtles astray. Jones had found his mission.