Great Turtle Race

Support leatherbacks…right now.

» Register to support a turtle. It’s FREE! You’ll receive daily updates on your turtle’s progress and messages from researchers about leatherbacks and other endangered marine and land species.

» Encourage other turtle supporters! Forward this site to family, friends, and co-workers.

» Donate! Donations will be used by the Leatherback Trust to protect turtles on their nesting beaches and along their migration route. We need $5 million to purchase the land around the park, patrol the beaches, feed and house volunteers, and provide marine patrols during nesting season.

» Sell on eBay to Help Leatherback Turtles!
Help the Leatherback Trust continue their mission of saving leatherback turtles by selling on eBay and donating the proceeds to the Leatherback Trust. Start Today!

Support leatherbacks

…in your everyday life

» Keep plastics out of lakes, rivers, and oceans. Join in Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup on September 15, 2007.

» Switch to reusable cloth bags. Here are a couple of places to order cloth bags. http://www.reusablebags.com/ for individual orders; http://www.enviro-tote.com/ for bulk and customizable orders. Support bans on plastic bags – see how San Francisco did it!

» Eat seafoods that don’t hurt sea turtles and other marine animals. Print out a copy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium pocket guide and tuck it in your purse or wallet for reference.

» Volunteer with EarthWatch to help patrol Playa Grande’s beaches during leatherback nesting months.

» Keep informed about leatherbacks and other sea turtles. After the race ends on April 30, follow your turtle by going to http://www.topp.org. And check out other turtle species at http://www.seaturtlestatus.org

» Join other people like you who care about sea turtles and are getting involved in campaigns to change policies to protect sea turtles and their pals.
Check out these Web sites for more information:

» State of the World’s Sea Turtles - www.seaturtles.org

» Seaturtle.org - http://www.seaturtle.org

» Oceana.org - http://www.oceana.org/north-america/what-we-do/stop-dirty-fishing/

» Caribbean Conservation Corporation - www.cccturtle.org

why is it important to help?

Q-A with Dr. Jim Spotila, turtle researcher, professor at Drexel University and president of the Leatherback Trust.

We’re doing this “race” to raise awareness and invite donations to protect leatherback turtles on Playa Grande's beaches and along the turtles' migration paths in the ocean. These amazing animals have been around 100 million years, but may have only 10 years left. I think the world needs to wake up to the issue and urgently help. As we say in the race theme, “They are going faster than you think.”

I’ve seen lots of turtles on land and in the water. Were any of those leatherbacks?

A:Leatherbacks, though huge and long-lived, are rarely seen (including in photographs) because:

» The males live only in the ocean.

» The females nest on dark, remote beaches for a few hours in the middle of the night.

» Populations in the world are crashing due to four human threats: egg poaching, loss of nesting beaches, accidental catch by commercial fishermen, and plastic -- leatherbacks eat jellyfish, which look like plastic bags. All seven major sea turtle species are endangered due to similar pressures.

Do the tags hurt the turtles?

No! They weigh less than a student backpack holding one biology book. The turtle doesn’t notice its “satellite backpack”, and the harness that holds the satellite doesn’t bother the turtle or interfere with its movement. After about a year and a half, the harness and the tag drop off the turtle. Q:

Why do you have company sponsors for the turtles?

A: We wanted to engage people in an urgent cause and to have some fun while they’re learning about leatherbacks. So we invited corporations to participate in the race and have a friendly competition. Each company paid $25,000 to sponsor a turtle. Part of the money goes to buy the satellite tags, which cost $10,000 each, and the remaining $15,000 goes to a variety of projects to help the turtles, including preserving their nesting beaches. The race organization is 100% volunteer effort with more than 50 volunteers. Q:

How did you get all the turtles to leave Playa Grande on April 16th?

Actually the turtles didn't really start on April 16th. It takes several days to get the satellite tags on all the turtles. One reason is because sometimes several nights go by without a leatherback coming ashore late in the nesting season. Another reason is that we wanted to wait to put the satellite tags on the turtles when they were ready to migrate away from the nesting beach. Their nesting season begins in October, and they nest nine times, on average, throughout the nesting season that ends in February. So, we put the transmitters on the 11 turtles at the end of the nesting season. (By the way, only 59 turtles came to the beach this year as compared to 1,500 in 1988.)

Then we collected the data on them as they left the beach and swam into the Pacific Ocean. For the Great Turtle Race we zeroed out their departure dates and are postdating the race - like a time-delay broadcast of the Olympics from Japan - so that day one in the race is April 16 for all turtles. In that way we can present the travels of the turtles in a way that is easy to follow for the viewers of the race. I wish I knew what they were actually doing out there, but only the person handling the data knows that and they won’t tell me since I am rooting for Drexelina.