Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Wonderful Wednesday

National Geographic Sea Turtle Race!!!

I thought this was really cool. Next week Miss Leigh suggested a theme of Earth Week. And this goes great with Earth Week!!!

Today, Conservation International and National Geographic announced The Great Turtle Race, which follows 11 live leatherback turtles in a simulation of their annual migration from Canada to the Caribbean.

The virtual race starts tomorrow at the National Geographic-hosted HERE . These very endangered and majestic creatures-the leatherback sea turtles-illustrate the increasingly dire plight of the Earth's oceans, thanks largely to human impact.

National Geographic will galvanize the youngest Web audience to rally around the cause with a new, addictive online game, daily updates on the turtles' progress and engaging biographies and artist renderings of the real-life animals and a No More Plastic pledge kids can take to do their part to ensure the survival of oceanic wildlife.

"We especially think The Great Turtle Race is going to resonate with the kids' audience because they're the generation that we are going to empower to protect the planet," says Michelle Sullivan, executive producer of the National Geographic kids Web site, where much of the programming for the two-week virtual race will reside. (www.nationalgeographic.com/kids)

This year's turtle racers have celebrity sponsors including socially conscious pop-culture icons Pearl Jam, R.E.M, as well as a selection of Olympic swimmers from the 2008 U.S. team. More details are included in the release below and later today we will have an MP3 file available of the press conference with comments from Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard, R.E.M's Mike Mills, turtle experts and two Olympic swimmers.

No comments: