Conservation International and National Geographic have teamed up with field research partner Canadian Sea Turtle Network to bring you the 2009 Great Turtle Race. This is the third such event in a series that brings public attention to the critically endangered leatherback sea turtle and generates important research and conservation support.
This year we follow 11 leatherback turtles as they leave their feeding areas in Canada and migrate to their breeding and nesting areas throughout the Caribbean.
Although the event takes place in the Atlantic Ocean, Great Turtle Race co-founding organization the Leatherback Trust remains an official Great Turtle Race partner, representing the Pacific Ocean, where the situation for leatherbacks is dire.
How the Race Got Started
After a few years of putting satellite tags on leatherback turtles as they left their nesting beach in Playa Grande, Costa Rica, Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) scientist George Shillinger and his colleagues noticed a clear pattern in the turtles’ behavior. After nesting, the turtles predictably and uniformly migrate southwest toward the Galápagos Islands and into the southeastern Pacific year after year to feed on jellyfish.
In discussing the persistent pattern in the turtles’ tracks, Shillinger (TOPP), marketing guru Mark Breier, conservationist Rod Mast (Conservation International), and Professor Jim Spotila (the Leatherback Trust) developed the idea to turn these scientific data into an online “race.” Their goals were to raise public awareness about the leatherback turtle and threats to their survival, to support further tagging research, and to generate funding for conservation work at Playa Grande, Costa Rica, one of the leatherback’s last strongholds in the Pacific Ocean.
Thus, in April 2007 the first Great Turtle Race was presented jointly by Conservation International, the Leatherback Trust, and TOPP. During the two-week event millions of people followed online as 11 female leatherbacks “raced” from Costa Rica toward the Galápagos Islands.
In 2008, the Leatherback Trust and TOPP hosted a second Great Turtle Race in collaboration with scientists from NOAA-NMFS. The race featured leatherbacks tagged on both sides of the Pacific Ocean in a race toward the International Date Line.
