The Great Turtle Race: a Struggle for Survival

The Great Turtle Race: a Struggle for Survival
By Jane Stevens
9/26/07

Science journalists adapt to a new environment through the use of interactive storytelling

Fifteen years ago, if I had done a story about the plight of the gigantic, ancient Pacific leatherback turtles, 90 percent of whose numbers have disappeared over the last 10 years, it would have appeared as a 4,000-word magazine article.

During the two-week race this April, the story appeared on The Great Turtle Race, an interactive Web site. It was a collaborative effort of Tagging of Pacific Predators, the Leatherback Trust, Conservation International and Costa Rica's environmental agency. Its main focus was the race: 11 leatherback turtles outfitted with satellite transmitters, swimming from their nesting beaches in Costa Rica to the Galapagos.

It was about as real as a leatherback turtle race can get. Researchers put satellite tags on the female leatherbacks in Costa Rica, as they have for several years in their efforts to find out where leatherbacks migrate. Computer programmers zeroed-out their departure times from the beaches (a la Tour de France). They updated their progress on the site every ten minutes.

The site, which has received 3 million hits from 650,000 unique visitors, is home to background on each of the turtles. Only on the Web can you have a three-sided baseball-like card. There are in-depth multimedia stories about satellite tagging, leatherback physiology, nesting, researchers and what was killing the turtles. (One way to help save the species might be to designate migration corridors where fishing fleets, which kill a lot of turtles accidentally, cannot operate.) There is also a page with educational modules and blogs, and a page that provides information about how to get involved in making sure the turtles don't go extinct.

Marine Science, Media Savvy

We named one of the turtles Stephanie Colburtle, with the hope that Stephen Colbert would notice. He did. Conservation International interested enough radio, TV and news organizations to reach 137 million pairs of eyes worldwide with the story. In the blogosphere, the race went viral. One week into the race, we Googled "Great Turtle Race"; 97,000 results popped up. We looked way out, into the 300s and 400s, and the references were still about the race.

Why was this site so engaging? It embraced everything Web: it was interactive, participatory, solution-oriented, immediately accessible and updatable, visual (videos, photos, charts, maps) and animated. It seeded and linked social networking, and had lots of context and continuity. It was entertaining and useful.

It even had a business model: companies paid $25,000 each to sponsor a turtle. The money paid for the satellite tags and went into a fund to buy parts of the turtles' nesting beach.

We've applied what we learned in the Great Turtle Race to TOPP.org, a new site for Tagging of Pacific Predators, the research project that led the Great Turtle Race (and where I'm reporter, editor, copy editor, fact-checker everything but a graphic designer, thank goodness). TOPP.org has an interactive, animated map that's updated nightly, a downloadable (to blogs and MySpace pages) animal widget with an RSS feed updated nightly with the animal's speed and distance traveled, a photo of the day, researchers' blog, ocean news, an ask-a-researcher feature and a feature story. Plans include a way for people to submit their own content, including videos and photos, and a way for people to download the widgets on their cell phones. That was one of the first requests we had.

We're also using social networking to tell the stories of the satellite-tagged animals. Omoo, the white shark, and Penelope, the elephant seal, have Facebook and MySpace pages. The turtles have MySpace pages. When I checked last, Penelope had 232 friends. (I have only 72.) Omoo is a member of several anti-shark-finning groups that are springing up on campuses.

What's News Got to Do with It?

Is the Great Turtle Race science journalism? Eight months ago, I would've sputtered an indignant, "No!" Now, I'm beginning to see how explanatory science journalism in particular can use games (in this case, a race) and social networking, as well as multimedia storytelling to provide useful and engaging information. (There are limits. If a scandal erupted in the Great Turtle Race, e.g., if it was revealed that an underhanded researcher substituted a loggerhead for a leatherback, would I want people to rely on me for the story? Of course not.)

It's pretty clear that science journalism has to figure out a new way to survive. As news organizations shrink their staffs and lay off their science writers, science has become less and less a part of the general conversation. These days, that's not a good thing. Scientific institutions have an opportunity to hire science journalists to build communities, and to provide them with information that educates and informs by using all the tricks that the Web has up its sleeves.

In the days when I was still writing 4,000-word magazine articles, I wanted my stories to engage people in the fascinating and important things scientists were learning. During the Great Turtle Race, we received dozens of e-mails saying how much fun it was to follow the turtles. One student raved about the race, and said how much he looked forward every day to learning more about the turtles. And then he asked, "By the way, wasn't this just a sneaky way to learn about science?"

Oh, yeah.