Earthwatch Institute brings more than 35 years of experience sending everyday volunteers around the world to its exciting partnership with the SEE Turtles program. With your help, we can help better protect these gentle and threatened creatures.
When you join Earthwatch’s Trinidad’s Leatherback Sea Turtles or Tracking Baja’s Black Sea Turtles projects, you’ll also help the SEE Turtles program transform local turtle habitats so that these ancient animals can become the basis of sustainable environmental experiences — not targets of poaching and pollution.
SEE the Threats to Turtles
As someone interested in the work of Ocean Revolution and Earthwatch, you probably already know some of the dire statistics about worldwide threats to sea turtles.
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Leatherback sea turtle populations in the Pacific Ocean have declined by as much as 90% in recent decades |
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Six of seven of the planet’s species of marine turtles are threatened or endangered |
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Hundreds of thousands of turtles die every year entangled in pollution and as fishing industry “by-catch” |
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Development in coastal areas destroys nesting areas and makes hatchlings’ journey to the sea more perilous |
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Though egg poaching and hunting for turtle meat are often illegal, desperate poverty in many places means these practices continue to devastate turtle populations |
SEE How YOU Can Help
How can you help? By spending your time, money, and energy on the two most important frontiers in turtle conservation efforts today, you will:
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Help scientists better understand and communicate the threats turtles face |
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Show communities that the benefits of supporting healthy turtle populations can far outweigh the short-term gain of turtle hunting |
SEE Turtles promotes sustainable, turtle-based research as a means of turtle conservation. When rigorous field science and volunteer participation combine, you, the researchers, the local communities, and, most importantly, the turtles are the long-term winners.