This fantastic blog post was originally published on Deb's Planet Ocean News blog:
The Cal Academy of Science was packed on Thursday night with an
estimated 2,400 people who came to celebrate sea turtles on World Sea
Turtle Day. They came to enjoy demonstrations, interactive exhibits and
an amazing show using the Planetarium’s dome showing how these gentle
and endangered creatures migrate thousands of miles across the vast
ocean as they travel from their nesting beaches to faraway foraging
grounds. The evening won’t soon be forgotten, it was pure blue magic.
Staff & volunteers from The Sea Turtle Restoration Project,
SPAWN, and Got Mercury.org, along with supporters from Sea Stewards and
The Center for Biological Diversity transformed African Hall into a
teaching hospital about everything from ‘what does a turtle egg look
like’ to international threats such as commercial fisheries, poaching
and big oil interests. On the central piazza stage was a model of a TED
(Turtle Extruder Device) required by Federal Law to be installed on
commercial shrimping boats to give sea turtles an escape hatch from
their nets to avoid drowning. It was clear that many were surprised to
learn about the consequences to marine life caused by their appetite for
seafood, especially shrimp.
Scott Benson from NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science
Center’s leatherback turtle program took us on a grand tour across the
Pacific using the biggest computer monitor at the Cal Academy of Science
– the planetarium’s dome itself - to demonstrate the incomprehensibly
large distances covered by these turtles as they migrate from Indonesia
& Papua New Guinea to Northern California, Oregon & Washington
in search of their favorite eats, the Brown Sea Nettle. Little did the
audience know that just 20 minutes before the show, there had been a
malfunction in the dome. No problema, the CAS geniuses crossed a few
wires and fixed it in plenty of time for the World Turtle Day
Presentation.
Sadly this year has been a tough one for sea turtles. Between the
Deepwater Horizon Disaster and an international community that still
doesn’t ‘get it’ about how many ways we compromise wildlife, it’s been
hard for endangered turtles to rebound. All we can hope is that by
continuing to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves and
educating the public, life will get better for our sea turtle friends in
years to come.
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