Archie Fairly Carr Jr., a Florida zoologist whose studies unraveled many mysteries about giant sea turtles and whose writings and conservation efforts have helped to save them from near extinction, died of cancer Thursday at his home on Wewa Pond near Micanopy, Fla. Dr. Carr, who was affiliated with the University of Florida in Gainesville for his entire 55-year career, was 77 years old.
Using laborious tagging techniques and research funds from the Navy, Dr. Carr was able to document the remarkable navigational abilities of green turtles, which may journey 1,200 miles each way from the beaches of Ascension Island, where they hatch, to the east coast of South America, where they mature, and then back to Ascension in the southern Atlantic Ocean to lay their eggs five or six years after their birth.
The Navy also helped Dr. Carr re-establish populations of the giant turtles along Caribbean shores where human predators who used them for food had wiped them out. In 1964 the Navy airlifted 18,500 baby turtles from the species' last Caribbean breeding site, in Costa Rica, to a dozen beaches in Mexico, Colombia, Florida and the Caribbean Islands. Whence the Baby Turtles? Even after elucidating the turtles' migration patterns, for decades, the ''turtle man,'' as Dr. Carr often called himself, remained baffled by what happens to green turtle babies after they slip into the ocean as hatchlings weighing a few ounces, not to be seen again for a year when they are more than a 1,000 miles from their birthplace and well on their way to becoming 400-pound adults.
After puzzling over the matter for three decades, at last in 1984 with the aid of modern tracking techniques, the lean, sun-weathered biologist had the answer for at least some, if not all, the baby turtles: They simply hitch rides on rafts of floating seaweed called sargassum, where for months they dine on small shrimp, crabs and jellyfish that also frequent the rafts.
Dr. Carr's studies also revealed that pollution of their ocean and beach habitats poses a serious threat to the turtles' survival. Baby turtles tend to chomp on almost anything, including fragments of Styrofoam, droplets of heavy oil and globs of tar. ''They bite these things, their jaws get glued together and they die,'' he reported. 'So Excellent A Fishe'Continue reading the main story
A native of Mobile, Alabama, Dr. Carr came to the University of Florida during the Depression to study English and become a teacher. But he was diverted to biology by a professor who quickly recognized the student's love for nature. As a boy in Alabama, he had collected snakes, frogs and turtles, a hobby he continued after moving to Florida. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Florida in 1932, a master's degree two years later and in 1937 he earned the university's first doctorate in biology.
He combined his original academic interest in English with his passion for biology by writing 11 books, several of which won top awards. In 1952, his ''Handbook for Turtles'' won the Daniel Giraud Elliott Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. ''High Jungles and Low,'' published in 1953 won the 1955 John Burroughs Medal for exemplary nature writing.
His most widely acclaimed popular book, ''The Windward Road,'' inspired the formation in 1959 of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, a group dedicated to studying and saving turtles from extinction. A chapter in the book was awarded the 1956 O. Henry prize for the best nonfiction short story. In ''So Excellent A Fishe, a Natural History of Sea Turtles'' published in 1967, he continued to unravel for the interested layman the saga of the giant turtles.
Dr. Carr is survived by his wife, Marjorie Carr of Micanopy, whom he met one Sunday in a deserted university biology laboratory where she had brought a sick quail for a diagnostic workup; four sons, Archie F. Carr III of New York, Stephen H. Carr and Thomas Carr, both of Micanopy, and David Carr of Tallahassee; a daughter, Mimi Carr of Gainesville; a brother, Thomas D. Carr of Gainesville, and two grandchildren.Continue reading the main story