Something Worth Doing: Two Days at Tortuga with S.T.O.P.

There is a specific kind of tired that feels good. Not the tired that comes from staring at a screen too long, or from a meeting that should have been an email, or from the low hum of modern life running louder than you want it to (these days, that's far too often). This is the other kind. Sunburned calves, sand still in your shoes at 9 pm, dirty feet and hands, voice slightly gone from talking to strangers all day. The kind of tired that only comes from actually doing something for a better tomorrow for all of us.

That is what the Tortuga Music Festival gave me this year. Well, that, and a free hat.

Why I Was There

I have been involved with Sea Turtle Oversight Protection for a while now, supporting their mission through Rainbow Flamingo Marketing, helping shape how they show up online and tell their story to a broader audience. But Tortuga is different from the behind-the-screen work I do on the daily. Tortuga is boots on the ground, sand under your feet, face to face with thousands of people who came to South Florida for a weekend of music and ended up leaving with a little more than that.

That is the opportunity. The more I align myself with the organization, the more I learn that I take it all that the mission proclaims seriously in my daily life as well.

South Florida's coastline is not a backdrop. It is a delicate ecosystem. The beaches from Miami up through Broward and beyond are active nesting grounds for sea turtles, and the health of those beaches, the dunes, the sea grass, the light levels at night, the foot traffic, all of it directly affects whether those turtles make it. Conservation here is not abstract. It is the sand you are standing on. It is the water you are looking at while a band plays forty yards behind you.

When you understand that, showing up for two days in the heat to plant sea oats and hand out turtle tattoos and talk to strangers feels less like volunteering and more like the obvious thing to do. It's just a small part of the bigger picture here.

The Dunes

The sea oat planting was the part of this weekend that stayed with me the most.

We brought plants out to the dunes as part of a restoration effort, pressing sea oats into the sand to help rebuild the natural buffer between the beach and the developed shoreline behind it. Dunes are not decorative. They absorb storm surge, protect infrastructure, and create the stable, dark, undisturbed environment that nesting sea turtles need to lay eggs and that hatchlings need to find their way to the water.

What I did not fully anticipate was how magnetic the activity would be to the people around us.

Strangers stopped. They watched for a second, then asked what we were doing. When we explained, something shifted in them. People knelt and started planting alongside us. Families joined in. A few people came back with their friends and got into it together. Someone told me they had no idea sea turtles nested this far north on the Florida coast, and walked away with a completely different relationship to the beach they had been visiting their whole life.

That is the moment I keep coming back to. That single exchange, repeated over and over throughout the weekend, is what community conservation actually looks like. It is not always dramatic. It is not always a campaign or a hashtag or a headline. Sometimes it is just a plant, a patch of sand, and two minutes of honest conversation.

There is something deeply empowering about being one of those people who starts that conversation. Not because it makes you special, but because it proves how little it takes to bring someone into something that matters. People want to participate in something real. They are waiting for the invitation.

The Booth, The Tattoos, The Knowledge

Beyond the planting, we had a full S.T.O.P. presence at the festival. Temporary sea turtle tattoos were a bigger hit than I ever expected them to be. People of all ages sat down, rolled up a sleeve, and walked away with a little piece of the mission on their arm. It is a small thing. But it is also a conversation starter that lives beyond the festival, and in conservation work, every extended conversation counts.

Sharing turtle knowledge with people who had never thought about it before is one of the more rewarding things I do in this space. Nesting season in South Florida runs from roughly March through October. A single loggerhead can lay multiple nests in a season, each containing over a hundred eggs. Light pollution confuses hatchlings and leads them away from the water. Beach furniture left out overnight creates obstacles that can trap a nesting female or a crawling hatchling.

These are not complicated facts. But most people do not know them. And once they do, they change their behavior. They turn off the porch light. They push the chairs back. They stop their kids from running toward a turtle track at night. The information is the intervention.

Being part of that information chain, from the science to the public, is something I feel genuinely honored to do.

Leading the Marketing Side

Running the marketing presence for S.T.O.P. at an event like Tortuga is a different kind of challenge than the conservation work itself. You are holding two things at once: being fully present in the moment, and thinking about how the moment becomes a story that keeps people connected after the weekend is over.

What do we capture? What do we post? How does this two-day activation translate into ongoing engagement, new volunteers, new donors, renewed awareness during nesting season? Those are the questions I am turning over in the back of my mind even while I am knee-deep in a dune restoration.

It is a challenge I genuinely love. Conservation organizations do not always have the marketing infrastructure to tell their story at full volume. That is where I get to contribute something specific, using the skills I have built over the years in this industry in the service of something that actually matters outside of a spreadsheet. Leading that effort, even when it is logistically complicated, feels like exactly the right use of what I know how to do.

Afroman and the Afternoon the Schedule Went Sideways

I will not pretend the whole weekend was earnest and sun-drenched and meaningful. Afroman performed, and the afternoon became something else entirely.

I had not seen him since college. Hearing "Because I Got High" blast across a beachfront crowd in Fort Lauderdale while I was standing there covered in sunscreen, festival wristband on, free hat from the Ford booth pulled low, was one of the more surreal moments of recent memory. He brought chaos in the best possible way. The schedule shifted. The crowd erupted. Nobody minded.

It was a good reminder that doing meaningful work does not require you to be serious every minute. The laughter, the nostalgia, the unexpected detour into a set that had the whole crowd losing it, that was part of the weekend too. You can care deeply about something and still stop and dance when Afroman shows up.

What This Weekend Actually Meant

I have been in a period of real self-reflection this year. Thinking about where I have been, what I have built, and what I actually want the shape of my life to look like going forward. 2025 has been the year I stopped performing a version of my life and started living one that feels like mine.

Tortuga was a concentrated version of that clarity.

Standing on a South Florida beach, doing real work for a coastline I love, watching strangers become participants in something bigger than a music festival, planting sea oats in the heat, getting mildly obsessed with tracking down every free merch booth on the grounds, none of it was for an audience. It was just what I wanted to be doing. That alignment, between your values and your time and your energy, is not something you manufacture. You have to build toward it, and then you have to recognize it when it arrives.

This is the work I want to do. This coast, this community, this mission. The conservation work, the marketing work, and the showing-up-with-sea-oats work. It is all connected. And it all matters.

The Coast Needs You Too

South Florida's beaches are extraordinary, and they are fragile. The nesting season is here. The turtles are coming.

If you want to volunteer, donate, or simply learn more about what Sea Turtle Oversight Protection does across Broward County and beyond, I will link everything below. You do not need a festival weekend to get involved. You just need to show up.

Go Now

The sand is warm. The work is good. Bring sunscreen.

I am a Fort Lauderdale-based content creator, marketer, and coastal conservation volunteer. I support Sea Turtle Oversight Protection through Rainbow Flamingo Marketing and have entirely too many opinions about free festival merch.