1. grrlscientist
  2. The Great Sea Turtle Race

The Great Sea Turtle Race

By grrlscientist on April 21, 2007.

Just in time for Earth Day, the great leatherback seaturtle race across open ocean from Costa Rica to the Galapagos Islands, where they will lay their eggs. The turtles are being tracked by satellite from Playa Grande in Costa Rica to the Galapagos Islands so you can watch their progress live and root for your favorite. In addition to the turtle race, there are all sorts of fun and educational things to read on this website. For example, you can register to support an individual turtle in this race across the ocean and will receive daily email updates regarding your turtle's progress as it approaches the Galapagos Islands.

.

Tags
conservation
your inner child

More like this

Look at those leatherbacks go!
Friend of the blog LO alerted me to The Great Turtle Race, wherein a passel of leatherback sea turtles "race" from Playa Grande in Costa Rica to the Galapagos Islands. The linked website it tracking the turtles via satellite, so you can watch their progress and root for your favorite. (I'm…
Leatherback turtles: one year later
A special guest post by Bryan Wallace of Conservation International, featuring original research In April of last year, I posted a story about how leatherback turtles are deep-sea explorers due to their incredible abilities to cope with the challenging conditions of the deep. The story was…
The Great Turtle Race
Leatherback sea turtles are almost 100 million years old but their rapid decline in population has led researchers to believe that they may be extinct in as few as 10. In an effort to learn more about these rare animals and bring attention to the cause, scientists outfitted 14 leatherbacks with…
Turtle-lympics, turtle-mentaries, and turtle-omedy
There is so much happening in the world of sea turtles right now that we're going to dedicate an entire week of postings to sea turtles and their air breathing kin. We're calling it Megavertebrate Week. Note the new banner above. We argue that turtles, seals, and whales should all be considered…

Totally cool for sure, and honchoed by Jim Spotila at Drexel, one of the best in the sea-turtle business. But (sorry) it's not truly "live"--the turtles left Central America at different times, and the Race people have normalized to a common start "date." The truth is, the race is over, and we're getting a delayed report. But it's still cool.