Turtle Island Restoration Network’s Executive Director Todd Steiner and Conservation Science Director Alex Hearn are in Quito, Ecuador attending the 11th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) to lobby for the inclusion of several species needing greater protection including silky sharks, hammerhead shark, mobula ray’s and other marine species such as the polar bear.
Turtle Island Restoration Network, an international ocean and marine conservation organization headquartered in Marin, has hired Kentfield native Doug Karpa as a staff attorney. Karpa, of Mill Valley, is an…

Sara Gendel, a graduate student at Bard College in New York, joined the Turtle Island Restoration Network team this July as our newest conservation intern.

Shark scientists gathered last week at a conference organized by the Colombian Presidential Agency for International Cooperation to learn how to effectively track the migration patterns and behavior of threatened sharks species with specialized underwater acoustic tags,* as well as strengthen the Latin-American Migramar network of scientists studying marine migratory patterns in the Eastern Pacific.

Schools of hammerhead sharks, Silky, Galapagos and Tiger sharks, and gentle sea turtles abound in the waters surrounding Cocos Island National Marine Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Cocos Island sits approximately 350 miles from the Costa Rican mainland and is surrounded by a 12-mile no-take Marine Protected Area.

Turtle Island Restoration Network is sponsoring graduate student Elena Nalesso in her efforts to better understand the sharks of the Cocos Islands. Elena is currently completing her thesis on the island’s sharks and recently returned from her first Cocos Island Expedition.

Sanjay, a 117-pound male, Pacific green sea turtle made history when he swam from the protected water of Cocos Island Marine National Park in Costa Rica and crossed into the Galapagos Marine Reserve in Ecuador.
One normal migration for turtles, one giant discovery for humankind. With his 14-day journey from the waters of Costa Rica’s Cocos Island National Park to the Galapagos Marine Reserve in Ecuador, “Sanjay,” an endangered green sea turtle, established the first direct migration link between the two protected areas.

First Scientific Proof of Migration Paths & Connection Between Marine Protected Areas in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Olema, Calif (June 19, 2014) – Sanjay, a 53 kilogram (117 pounds)…
Charity Navigator, a guide to responsible giving and one of the most used independent evaluator of charities, has awarded Turtle Island Restoration Network the prestigious 4-star rating.