News, Videos, and Fundraising Expeditions Bolster Leatherback Watch Program

This summer has seen unprecedented success of our Leatherback Watch Program thanks to our growing team of interns, project partners, and citizen scientists contributing to our all-volunteer network monitoring the critically endangered West Pacific leatherback sea turtles off the U.S. West Coast. Just this week we shared a press release that put the Sea Turtle Restoration Project in the news in several California coast print and online media sources. The sightings information and contributions from our key project partners Blue Ocean Whale Watch in Moss Landing, The Oceanic Society in San Francisco, and Sea Turtles Forever along the Oregon coast, were quoted in the Pacifica Tribune online and print news story. We’ve teamed up with the Oceanic Society team to invite the general public on three Leatherback Watch Program fundraising expeditions through the Gulf of the Farralones National Marine Sanctuary where a leatherback was spotted on October 2, 2011. STRP members and guests received a discount price and STRP received a portion of the proceeds for these trips (win-win!). The amazing leatherback photos and videos have just been compiled into a video short by our intern Ming Ong and is now available for viewing on the Sea Turtle Restoration Project’s YouTube Channel and posted below. Since we have the exact GPS coordinates from each photo and video, these amazing images will soon be hosted in the Ocean Explorer layer of Google Earth!