Earthwatch-funded field research on sea turtles has launched a host of distinguished academic and conservation careers. The young men and women who earned their doctorate and other degrees as a result of leading Earthwatch volunteers on nighttime beach patrols and other intensely hands-on work, were dedicated self-starters. Typically, they not only had to possess the passion for their work that would inspire a cadre of fresh Earthwatch recruits every week or ten days during the turtles' breeding season; they also had to have the sensitivity and political finesse to win over often-suspicious local people steeped in a tradition of subsistence poaching of turtles and/or eggs. The following are brief vignettes of the accomplishments and impacts of some of these young researchers.
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Karen Eckert
Field Director, Saving the Leatherback Turtle, St. Croix, U.S.V.I. (1982-85). Now Executive Director, Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST)
Ph.D., Zoology, University of Georgia
For more than two decades, Eckert has been a sea turtle researcher and promoter conservation diplomacy for six species of endangered sea turtle in the Caribbean. Her brainchild, WIDECAST (a partner with UNEP), works with Country Coordinators in more than 30 Caribbean nations to develop and implement sea turtle recovery plans. In 1994, the U.N. inducted Eckert into the Global 500 Roll of Honor for Environmental Achievement, citing especially her work in "conservation and grassroots community empowerment." In 1996, she received a three-year Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation.
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Scott A. Eckert
Field Director, Saving the Leatherback Turtle, St. Croix, U.S.V.I. (1982-85). Now Senior Research Biologist, Hubbs SeaWorld Research Institute, Adjunct Professor, University of San Diego, and project consultant, Trinidad's Leatherback Sea Turtles
Ph.D., Zoology, University of Georgia
Member, Marine Turtle Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union Species Survival Commission and Chairman, U.S. Federal Pacific Recovery Team for Marine Turtles
Besides an obvious dedication to marine turtle management and conservation, Eckert has pioneered studies of physiology, especially diving physiology of vertebrates from leatherback turtles in the Caribbean to Weddell seals in Antarctica. It was his research that determined that leatherback turtles are the deepest-diving vertebrate known. Eckert has received the National Marine Fisheries Service Recognition Award for "Outstanding Efforts in Sea Turtle Conservation."
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Mr. Kamarruddin Ibrahim
Research Officer with the Malaysian Marine Fishery Resources Development and Management Department
M.Sc. in Fishery Biology & Management, University of Wales, UK
Ph.D., University of Queensland
A government employee in the fisheries department, Ibrahim has been the primary implementer of the Department's Marine Turtle Research and Monitoring Program. His doctorate thesis research, linked directly to the Earthwatch-supported project Green Turtles of Malaysia, was on "Sex Ratios and Nesting Ecological Studies of the Malaysia Green Turtle, Chelonia mydas, and Its Implication for Management of Hatchling Production."
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Jeffrey A. Seminoff
Principal Investigator, Sea Turtles of Baja (1996-2004); Southwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA
Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology, University of Arizona
Bilingual, Seminoff has concentrated his considerable wildlife research and conservation efforts on several marine turtles species in Bahia de Los Angeles, Gulf of California, Baja, Mexico. His innovative methods at involving the community in monitoring turtles and his focus on the non-breeding lives of sea turtles have made him an expert in sea turtle diet and energetics. His findings have proved that this Gulf is a major feeding ground for several turtle species and deserves protection.
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Tundi Agardy
originator, Saving the Leatherback Turtle, St. Croix, U.S.V.I. (1982).
Now Founder/Executive Director, Sound Seas, Arlington, VA
Ph.D., University of Rhode Island
Member, IUCN's Commissions on National Parks and Protected Areas (CNPPA) and Species Survival (SSC)
Agardy has been an ardent innovator and proponent of integrating community-based conservation efforts with public policy. For her, successful conservation projects can only happen that are based on both natural and sociological findings. Agardy has served as a senior scientist at with the World Wildlife Fund, as an independent consultant to the World Bank and UNDP and most recently directed Conservation International's global marine conservation work. She has authored Marine Protected Areas and Ocean Conservation, (Academic Press) and UNESCO's Guidelines on Coastal Biosphere Reserve Planning. In 1994 Agardy was profiled in TIME magazine as one of 50 young leaders to watch in the United States.
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Alison Leslie
Principal Investigator, Crocodiles of the Okavango, (2002-2006), Crocodiles of Zambezi, (2006-present) and Senior Lecturer, Department of Conservation Ecology, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
Ph.D., Drexel University
Chair, Herpetological Association of Africa
Now an ecologist and respected crocodile specialist, Leslie received her M.S. degree from Drexel University studying the nesting ecology of leatherback turtles on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast and helped coordinate the Costa Rican Sea Turtles in 1992. She has led Earthwatch teams capturing and studying Nile crocodiles first in South Africa (1995-97), and now in Botswana since 2002.
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Richard Reina
Principal Investigator, Costa Rican Sea Turtles (1996-present); Monash University
Ph.D., Australian National University
Reina's interests include conservation biology, physiological ecology, and diving in animals. For his doctorate thesis he studied the physiology of salt regulation in green turtles on the Great Barrier Reef. Since receiving his doctorate, he has been a principal investigator on Costa Rican Sea Turtles, examining hatchling paternity, nesting ecology, and population dynamics as well as building and maintaining the project's website (www.leatherback.org) and conducting online in-the-field chats with schoolchildren.
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Beyond these success stories are a host of others in the making. Frank Paladino reports, for example, that the Costa Rican leatherback project regularly trains in-country nationals, some of whom then have served as park directors for Parque Nacional Las Baulas, some of whom have gone on to assist leatherback researchers on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. Many of these local students as well as graduate students from the researchers' institutions, Spain, Switzerland, South Africa, and Uruguay have received M.S. or Ph.D. degrees as a result of their work on the project. The researchers also provide lectures and materials for the local guide cooperative (some of whose members were former poachers) and created an artisan cooperative that makes leatherback souvenirs for tourists.