2. Gale Bishop Collection, 1963-2012

Scope and content:

This collection contains material from throughout Bishop's career spanning from 1964 to 2012 including content related to his early research on fossil decapod crustaceans, research on heavy mineral sand accumulation and occurrences, sea turtle nesting ecology and conservation, and science education reform. It contains approximately 80 sea turtle field notebooks from Bishop's work on St. Catherines Island, two archival albums of film-based photography prints and negatives, Kodachrome photographs, maps, books, reprints, a collection of annual sea turtle data, grant proposals, correspondence, pertinent financial records, several manuscript submittals for publication with associated figures and outside reviews, work permits, and ephemera.

Biographical / historical:

Dr. Gale A. Bishop has produced a body of published work consisting of 108 papers, 11 websites, and hundreds of talks on science, science education, and sea turtles. Born in North Dakota, Bishop grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he attended high school before earning a B.S. (1965) and M.S. (1967) in geology from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He went on to earn a Ph.D. (1971) in geology from University of Texas at Austin. His career included 28 years of teaching at Georgia Southern University (1971–1999), followed by five years at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (2001–2006), and 25 concurrent years as director or co-director of the St. Catherines Island Sea Turtle Conservation Program (1990–2012), which was designated the Georgia Southern University Sea Turtle Program at St. Catherines Island in 2014.

Bishop was founding director of the Georgia Southern University Museum and has served as associate editor for the Journal of Crustacean Biology and associate editor for invertebrate paleontology for the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (2001–2008). Bishop's earlier research focused on fossil decapod crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, and shrimp) of the Cretaceous of North America, and his later research focused on heavy mineral sand accumulation and occurrences, sea turtle nesting ecology and conservation, and science education reform. He has produced a significant body of research on nest morphology and nesting ecology of loggerhead sea turtles, and the geology of St. Catherines Island. He impacted the study of the geological record with the 1997 discovery of the first-known fossilized sea turtle nesting structures in the Cretaceous Fox Hills sandstone of Colorado.

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