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History – Reaching Out, Building the SWOT Team

Only through the dedicated efforts of worldwide scientists, conservationists, and sea turtles enthusiasts have sea turtles been safeguarded from extinction thus far. However, while sea turtle conservation projects are found along coastlines spanning the globe, the vast majority of these efforts are highly localized—limited to individual countries, ocean basins, or even specific beaches—and sea turtle conservation efforts are conducted in isolation from one another.

Prior to the founding of SWOT in 2003 and the publication of the first SWOT Report magazine in 2006, local conservationists had no resource by which to review the data or results of sea turtle conservation projects from other regions of the world— or by which to share their own data. As a result, global-scale strategies for sea turtle conservation have been an impractical challenge in the absence of global-scale sea turtle data.

Conceived in September 2003 by members of the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group, Duke University’s Marine Geospatial Ecology Laboratory, the International Sea Turtle Society and Conservation International, SWOT’s official public launch took place in 2004 at the 24th Annual Sea Turtle Symposium in Costa Rica, at which it was repeatedly recognized in high-level presentations as one of the most important steps forward for global sea turtle conservation.

Two years later, in April 2006, SWOT Report, Vol. I was launched and met with great enthusiasm at the 26th Annual Sea Turtle Symposium in Greece. The first issue of the magazine featured the first global map of leatherback turtle nesting sites around the world, along with articles on all seven species.

The second annual issue of the magazine was launched at the 27th Symposium, in March 2007, surpassing its first-year successes with the addition of a second species, loggerheads, to the global map of nesting sites. The third volume of the magazine and SWOT website, launched at the 28th Symposium in January 2008, includes the most detailed global map of hawksbill nesting sites, as well as the most recent year of global loggerhead and leatherback nesting data.

Over the next five years, SWOT’s map series will continue to grow to include all seven species of sea turtles and, with its annually updated information, is destined to become the first accurate gauge of global sea turtle abundance trends.

Reaching far beyond the hands of conservationists, the magazine has made its way into universities and secondary and elementary schools worldwide. It reaches parents and children in numerous coastal communities around the world, artisanal fishers and fishing industry managers. General consumers in several countries pick up the magazine at aquariums, zoos, and sea turtle hospitals—people who perhaps previously believed their seafood choices, their use of plastic bags, or their beach holidays had no effect on ocean life. Likewise, each year the magazine finds its way onto the desks and into the minds of policymakers in countries around the world.

With the publication of SWOT Report, Volume III in January 2008, it has become clear just how important this magazine can be to local, regional, and national conservation efforts on the six continents of our planet that are visited by sea turtles. The creators of SWOT Report make it available free of charge to hundreds of partners around the world who use it to communicate the importance of sea turtle conservation to policymakers, educators, coastal communities, fishers, and broader publics who are learning that their own behaviors—no matter if they are hundreds of miles from any coastline—can impact sea turtles and other marine life.