Q: A:Leatherbacks, though huge and long-lived, are rarely seen (including in photographs) because:

» The males live only in the ocean.

» The females nest on dark, remote beaches for a few hours in the middle of the night.

» Populations in the world are crashing due to four human threats: egg poaching, loss of nesting beaches, accidental catch by commercial fishermen, and plastic -- leatherbacks eat jellyfish, which look like plastic bags. All seven major sea turtle species are endangered due to similar pressures.

Q:
A: No! They weigh less than a student backpack holding one biology book. The turtle doesn’t notice its “satellite backpack”, and the harness that holds the satellite doesn’t bother the turtle or interfere with its movement. After about a year and a half, the harness and the tag drop off the turtle. Q: A: We wanted to engage people in an urgent cause and to have some fun while they’re learning about leatherbacks. So we invited corporations to participate in the race and have a friendly competition. Each company paid $25,000 to sponsor a turtle. Part of the money goes to buy the satellite tags, which cost $10,000 each, and the remaining $15,000 goes to a variety of projects to help the turtles, including preserving their nesting beaches. The race organization is 100% volunteer effort with more than 50 volunteers. Q: A:Actually the turtles didn't really start on April 16th. It takes several days to get the satellite tags on all the turtles. One reason is because sometimes several nights go by without a leatherback coming ashore late in the nesting season. Another reason is that we wanted to wait to put the satellite tags on the turtles when they were ready to migrate away from the nesting beach. Their nesting season begins in October, and they nest nine times, on average, throughout the nesting season that ends in February. So, we put the transmitters on the 11 turtles at the end of the nesting season. (By the way, only 59 turtles came to the beach this year as compared to 1,500 in 1988.)

Then we collected the data on them as they left the beach and swam into the Pacific Ocean. For the Great Turtle Race we zeroed out their departure dates and are postdating the race - like a time-delay broadcast of the Olympics from Japan - so that day one in the race is April 16 for all turtles. In that way we can present the travels of the turtles in a way that is easy to follow for the viewers of the race. I wish I knew what they were actually doing out there, but only the person handling the data knows that and they won’t tell me since I am rooting for Drexelina.