Earthwatch has supported leatherback turtle research for more than 25 years, charting an alarming decline in Pacific populations and Atlantic numbers on the rise. Award-winning author Carl Safina's important new book, Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur, provides a unique perspective on this ancient reptile and surveys the current state of turtle research. Safina walks in the footsteps of Earthwatch-supported scientists Dr. Scott Eckert, Dr. Frank Paladino, and Dr. Peter Dutton, as well as other experts to track the leatherback's unique natural history and to gauge the effects of human intervention.
At the center of Safina's rich and buoyant story is an evolutionary marvel, a giant reptile that can weigh a ton and dive deeper than any whale, whose ancestors saw dinosaurs rule and fall a hundred million years ago. Readers follow the path of leatherback migrations by sea and satellite to remote beaches on every continent, including a 6,000-mile Pacific excursion from Monterey, California, to newly discovered nesting grounds in Papua New Guinea. Author of Song for the Blue Ocean and Eye of the Albatros, and president of the Blue Ocean Institute, Safina has once again captured a moving portrait of our embattled ocean world. Voyage of the Turtle shows us how now, more than ever, the leatherback turtle needs us, "the only creature who ever posed a mortal threat, to chart a path to its future."
Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur. Carl Safina. Henry Holt and Company, 2006.
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