(Disclaimer: these quotes may be slightly out of context, a practice Limbaugh approves of but rarely warns listeners of when practiced on his show)

Radio star Rush Limbaugh is worried about sea turtles and is doing something about it. He and his neighbors in Florida know that just one light can kill thousands of sea turtles. "Giant sea turtles lumber out of the ocean, they trundle up to the beach, they dig the nest, they lay the eggs, and they trundle back to the ocean", says Limbaugh. "And then some weeks later the hatchlings hatch and they burrow up out of the sand and they are supposed to go to the ocean." But, says Limbaugh, "lights on the beach distract the hatchlings and cause them not to go to the ocean but inland. So, those of us who live on the beach have to turn the lights off."

Latest Headlines

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However, SEATURTLE.ORG does run on an Apple Xserve and the website, content and tools are developed almost exclusively on a 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro and a 24-inch iMac. So chances are pretty good that any new Apple device will eventually make it's way to the SEATURTLE.ORG home office, where, it is safe to say, it will be used to save sea turtles.

Thousands of sea turtles have been rescued from the unusually cold weather experienced during the second week of January in the southeastern US. These turtles are being cared for by organizations from North Carolina to Texas. The unprecedented number of stranded sea turtles has left these organization scrambling for resources and forced them to spend funds typically budgeted for an entire year. Please help these organizations care for and return the rescued sea turtles to the wild by making a donation of money, time or materials.

Photos courtesy of NOAA

Below is a listing of organizations that need your help. This list is being constantly updated, so please check back often!

If you find a dead or injured sea turtle, please report it to the proper authorities.

NEWS

A Record 5000 Sea Turtles Cold-Stunned in Florida
2000 sea turtles rescued from unusually cold sea off Florida
Statewide turtle rescue hits historic proportions
Shocked by the biting cold, dying turtles get new life
Cold snap's toll just now being completely felt

Do you tweet about sea turtles? Drop me a line on twitter and I will add you to the list.

And, as always, get all of the latest news and updates from the sea turtle world by following SEATURTLE.ORG on Twitter.

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever", said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

Last 10 photos

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Last 10 photos in plastic category

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Last 10 photos in hawksbill category

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Note that you cannot put more than one photo widget on a page or they will conflict with each other.

If you are interested in including other categories from the Image Library in your website just let me know.

Similarly you can include a news widget that includes the latest sea turtle related headlines from seaturtle.org's news section.

Last 10 news headlines

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You can also get nesting widgets by following these instructions from the Sea Turtle Nest Monitoring System.

I am looking for help in describing more specifically how seaturtle.org helps individuals and organizations around the world involved in sea turtle research and conservation.

If you use seaturtle.org, I would greatly appreciate if you could send along a short description of how one or more of the resources has helped to improve your sea turtle work. If English is not your first language, it would be great to receive a version in your first language as well!

Please note that I may use your contribution as an endorsement in seeking public support for seaturtle.org in the Giving Challenge (http://www.causes.com/seaturtle) or on the seaturtle.org website, so please let me know how you would like to be recognized (name and organization).

Please send feedback to mcoyne@seaturtle.org.

Thanks very much for your help!

The show ends with the sobering note that our plastic garbage will likely be our longest lasting legacy, outlasting our steel megastructures and monuments of solid stone. After 600 hundred years the plastic trash will have photo-degraded into smaller and more toxic elements and continue to impact wildlife long after we are gone (they even have a video vignette of a hawksbill sea turtle).

While our sudden disappearance from the Earth is unlikely, the take home message is that even if we were to completely stop using plastics today they will continue to accumulate in the environment for many years. Some significant steps are needed to gain control of plastic and mitigate the long-term price we are going to pay for our current irresponsible practices.

Photo gallery from the episode

This episode of Life After People will be airing again (all times are US eastern)...
Tonight (11 May) at 11pm
Tomorrow (12 May) at 3am
17 May at 5pm

But the worst part was the extreme hyperbole playing upon the completely bogus reputation of sharks as cold-blooded killers. Indicative of the overblown drama was the line "they are invading our rivers". Never mind that the rivers don't belong to us and that sharks and many other organisms have been using them long before humans even evolved. They repeatedly suggest that humans are in mortal danger because the sharks are moving in to fresh water. Complete bunk!

Left unmentioned was that IF the sharks are increasingly moving in to fresh water it is because we have wiped out their food resources in the ocean and they are looking farther afield for food. Or perhaps they have just always been there and we didn't notice it. The truth is that shark species around the world are in trouble because we have wiped out their food sources, fisheries that target shark fins and waste the rest of the shark, and a shoot first ask questions later mentality when it comes to sharks fueled by shows like this that continue to demonize these magnificent marine creatures.

One cool tidbit of info was that scientists believe that greenland sharks live up to 200 years, the longest lived vertebrate on the planet. But in general, this show represents the worst kind of human arrogance. Hopefully the first and last episode of this show we will watch.

I was invited to speak at the Duke University Marine Lab this week as part of their Seminar Series. The PhD students invite a different speaker each week. I recorded my presentation on "Education, Outreach and Collaborative Networks", or how seaturtle.org is working to network the global sea turtle community. The presentation is included below.

Google just announced an expansion of its popular Google Earth application to include seabed maps and underwater imagery. This new "Google Ocean" provides a powerful new tool for sea turtle researchers.

SEATURTLE.ORG's wildlife tracking tool allows researchers to open satellite tracks in Google Earth with the click of a button. By incorporating the sea floor in to Google Earth, Google has provided an exciting new way for researchers to visualize their wildlife tracking data.

Swim with Adelita

Take an 8-minute tour across the Pacific Ocean with Adelita the sea turtle.

Adelita was the first turtle ever tracked across an entire ocean basin using satellite telemtry...maybe even the first marine animal! Millions of kids shared her migration on the internet. Her migration helped to prove that loggerheads born in Japan cross the Pacific and feed in California and Mexico, before migrating back home to nest in Japan. She also reminds us that the oceans are connected and that we need to work together to protect sea turtles and their habitat.

These are the same bathymetry data used in SEATURTLE.ORG's STAT and Maptool resources.

This is a very exciting development, particularly if it means we are getting closer to the release of the long rumored Google Ocean product.

Of these visitors about 60% are coming directly to seaturtle.org (ie they are not coming through a search engine or referred from another site). About 25% are referred by search engines (mostly google) and 15% are referred from other web sites. Want to know where your site stands?

Here are the Top 10 Sites referring visitors to seaturtle.org.

10. Marine Conservation Society UK

9. FalconTrak

8. Free Ecology Journals

7. 29th Sea Turtle Symposium

6. Bald Head Island Conservancy

5. Georgia Sea Turtle Center

4. Gumbo Limbo Nature Center

3. SCDNR Marine Turtle Conservation Program

2. Ocean Conservancy

and the NUMBER ONE referring site to seaturtle.org is....

Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center