Bubbles in the Bathtub

A large part of seaturtle.org's success in 2003 was due to an overhaul of the Board of Directors. Doing so resulted in a responsive group of people to brainstorm with and bounce ideas off of, resulting in much more rapid and targeted development. Before 2003 seaturtle.org was largely a one-person effort, but there was just no way I could keep up as the resources expanded. The addition of a "working" board of individuals interested in the success of seaturtle.org was critical to our future success. J Nichols stayed on from the original three-person board and we added Donna Broadbent, Matthew Godfrey and Brendan Godley to the mix.

With the help of the new board several new resources were added to seaturtle.org during the past year. The first was the Sea Turtle Image Library, which has been a huge success! To date 610 photos have been added to the library covering topics from satellite tracking to disease and pathology to techniques in sea turtle research. The library has received more than 168,000 hits since it's inception.

Maptool was initially opened late in 2002, but underwent significant development during 2003, finally making it a useful tool. Maptool has over 75 active users and has been used to create map products that have appeared in reports, presentations and peer-reviewed publications.

Development of Maptool was critical to the creation of the Satellite Tracking Program on seaturtle.org. This is one of my favorites, a pet project that I have been mulling about in my brain for a couple of years. The initial idea occurred to me when I saw how much trouble many researchers had managing their satellite tracking data. Hmm... I just went off on a rant about data management which doesn't really fit in here :) I'll follow this post with that rant if you are interested. In the end what we have is an automated, user-friendly system for retrieving, archiving and managing ARGOS satellite tracking data, that includes a public website for sharing maps and data for outreach and education. There is still a lot to do here, but I am quite pleased with the way it has turned out and the response from both the public and research community. This has quickly become the most popular resource on seaturtle.org, edging out the Marine Turtle Newsletter, with nine different organizations from around the world tracking a multitude of turtles, 20 of which are publicly shared on seaturtle.org. We have more groups and turtles lined up to be added during 2004.

Speaking of the MTN, it was several years in coming, but we finally got all issues of the MTN online in 2003. Now, every issue of the MTN, going all the way back to 1976 is available free of charge and fully searchable on seaturtle.org. We are extremely proud of this accomplishment and hope that the sea turtle community makes use of this wonderful resource.

Another new addition that hasn't seen much use so far, but that we hope will become more popular in the future is the Sea Turtle Tagging site. This site discusses the various methods for tagging sea turtles, appropriate use, where to get materials, etc. It includes a bibliography and the beginnings of a great list of tips and tricks. Related to the tagging site is the new TagFinder resource. TagFinder is a utility for getting people that find tagged turtles in touch with the people that tagged the turtle. So far nine different organizations around the world have submitted more than 5000 tags to the database. We hope to get many more organizations involved in 2004.

Kelly Samek and Paul Mikkelsen have continued to work tirelessly to manage the News and Links sections on seaturtle.org. They have done a fantastic job and it shows as more and more people make use of these great resources. In fact, these resources have grown so much that Paul brought in someone to help manage the sea turtle links during 2003. Mary Canada has been a welcome addition to the seaturtle.org team. They have done such a great job that I am hoping to find more help managing the various resources on seaturtle.org so that we can expand even more. Watch for announcements about new resources and opportunities in the near future!

By far the most gratifying event of 2003 was our Server Fund Drive held in May. We had been operating on an aging server that was based more than 2000 miles away from me (the primary developer for seaturtle.org). It was time to replace and upgrade the old server so we held a server fund drive and the community came through in a big way. Our goal had been to raise $6000 for a new server and expenses to get set up in a new facility closer to Washington DC. Instead we raised over $7500. Even more gratifying were all of the kind words of support from all of you out there that use seaturtle.org. Thanks to everyone that helped out!

The effort was so successful that we are planning to run an annual funding drive. The details are still being worked out, but rest assured that we will do everything we can to prevent bothering those of you that don't want to be bothered and we will restrict fund raising efforts to causes that can do the greatest good for sea turtle research and conservation.

Thanks to everyone for your support and patronage and happy 2004!