BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A coastal Georgia man has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for stealing the eggs of protected sea turtles while he was on probation for an earlier offense of the same crime.

Sixty-one-year-old Lewis Jackson of Brunswick offered no explanation for his actions when he appeared Wednesday in U.S. District Court and asked for mercy.

Judge Lisa Godbey Wood replied: "You have squandered your chance of leniency." She previously sentenced Jackson to six months in prison in April 2013 after he pleaded guilty to stealing 156 eggs of loggerhead sea turtles, a federally threatened species, from Sapelo Island.

When 84 more loggerhead eggs went missing from the same island in July, authorities immediately suspected Jackson. They caught him boarding a ferry with the eggs inside a cooler.

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This story has been corrected to show Jackson's age is 61, not 60.