Authored by: Stephen R. Swinburne
*Click image to enlarge
Just around midnight, an eight-hundred-pound leatherback sea turtle crawls awkwardly out of the Caribbean surf and onto the sandy beach in St. Kitts. She has a job to do, and it's a vital one: dig a nest for her eggs. Not used to being on land, she lumbers up the beach, find a spot, and begins to dig. In this nest, she lays eggs that will hatch into part of the next generation of leatherbacks. Since only one in a thousand of the eggs for this critically endangered species produces an adult sea turtle, the odds are stacked against her.
That's where Dr. Kimberly Stewardt, know around St. Kitts as the turtle lady, comes in. Lying in the sand on the dark beach, she gets to work: taking samples and measurements from mother turtles, counting eggs as they're laid, and even relocating nests that have been created in unviable areas on the beach. But sea turtle conservation takes a lot more than just biology. It takes dedication to the turtles, as well as to the communities where the nesting sites lie and where fishing for sea turtles can provide much needed income and even food.
Join the renowned author and photographer Steve Swinburne on a journey through time to examine the history of the leatherback and other sea turtles and how they came to be endangered - and explore the efforts being made today to save them.
Size: 11.5" X 9.5" X 0.75"
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2014)