Green Turtle Photo Project

Below is an email regarding a photo project by Seaturtle.org. Note the deadline is coming up soon: November 15.

The State of the World's Sea Turtles (SWOT) Project and Seaturtle.org invite you to participate in an exciting community photo project to document the global variation in green turtles. About SWOT The SWOT project was established in 2004, and consists of: a global network of more than 500 sea turtle researchers, conservationists, and enthusiasts (the SWOT Team); a regularly updated global database of biogeographical information on all sea turtle species; and an annually published SWOT Report, a communications and networking tool built by and for conservation practitioners. For more information and to see past SWOT Reports, visit www.seaturtlestatus.org. About this Photo Project The next issue of SWOT Report (volume 6) will have a special feature focusing on green turtles and including articles, photographs and maps. As part of this feature, the project coordinators are currently assembling photographs of green turtles from around the world to create a photo feature within the printed report, online at the SWOT website, and for presentation to the sea turtle community at the 30th Annual Sea Turtle Symposium in San Diego, CA next year. The goal is to assemble as many photographs as possible that show the many variations in green turtle coloration, shape, size, etc. (including black turtles). Together, we would like to invite you to participate by submitting your green turtle images that meet the guidelines below.As the global network and repository for sea turtle images, the Seaturtle.org image libraryhas teamed up with SWOT to host the images for this project, and to allow them to live on as a community resource as part of the image library. Already, we have received some very interesting submissions, including an impressive 30 images submitted by Kei Okamoto of green turtles that were bycaught in Japan's coastal waters. To get a sense of the variation in the turtles of just this one region, see the two images to the right. Similar images have also been submitted from French Polynesia, Syria, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Uruguay, Brazil, Malaysia, Iran, Turks & Caicos, Solomon Islands, Italy, several Indian Ocean islands, and more. What are we looking for? We are looking for green turtle/black turtle photos that: Are taken from directly above the turtle, Show the turtle's full carapace and body, Are of a living turtle Images that do not meet these criteria will not be included in the project, but will still be useful to the community at Seaturtle.org. Please only submit photos for which you hold the copyright. Where/how should images be submitted? Please upload your images online into the Seaturtle.org image library category for green turtle images. To do so, you must log-in to Seaturtle.org, go to the image library page, and choose "upload photos" on the right side of the page. Please include the location of the image in the "Description" field (country and ocean basin). To indicate your permission for the images to be included in SWOT Report and/or on the SWOT website, please put the text "SWOT photo project" in the image's "Description" field. Make sure to also include the photographer/copyright holder's name as you would like it to be credited. Here is an example of an image with the proper metadata -http://www.seaturtle.org/imagelib/?photo=5367. How will the images be used? Some images will be used in a photo feature in the printed version of SWOT Report, Vol. 6. Other images will be posted online at the SWOT website (www.seaturtlestatus.org) in a photo collage / feature of some sort (details TBD). We will also prepare a poster for display at the 30th Sea Turtle Symposium in San Diego, CA. All images will be credited to the photographer or copyright holder. What is the deadline? Please submit or post your images by November 15, 2010.