Leatherbacks (Dermochelys coriacea) are the largest of the seven living species of sea turtles and the only member of the family Dermochelyidae. They are also one of the deepest diving vertebrates in the ocean, descending to 1,000 meters or more in search of their sea jelly prey. The Great Turtle Race is a clever, multi-agency effort to raise awareness of these endangered creatures.
The fellows over at Deep-Sea News have put together something special as part of The Great Turtle Race of 2009. In partnership with Conservation International and National Geographic, they created the first Iron Turtle Award, which recognizes the deepest diving leatherback in the competition. This year’s award goes to the turtle named Cali.
Academic judges from Deep Sea News have declared a 340 kg leatherback turtle named Cali to be this year’s Iron Turtle award winner in the Great Turtle Race 2009. The results are a surprise to race fans.
Cali completed 148 dives longer than one hour, and he dove deeper than 800 m on five separate occasions during the marathon, thereby securing first and second place in these two events. For comparison, the world record human free-diver, Sara Campbell, dove to a mere 96 m only one time and only for 3.5 minutes!
I am happy to have played a part in this project. I designed the Iron Turtle graphic for the competition. I started by spending a couple of hours working in Illustrator, creating several rounded, medallion-like iterations. But as is typical with these kinds of projects, the final idea popped out of my brain in a pre-lucid moment just before waking one morning. I had an image of an iron girder getting compressed in its center and a leatherback turtle descending in-between the words IRON and TURTLE. The metal gradients, pattern swatches and offset path in Illustrator all proved useful in completing the design.
Stay tuned to deepseanews.com for ways you can help sponsor the Iron Turtle Award for 2010. I am looking forward to it and expect it will be another “abyssmal” success. 
We might even get a chance to fabricate the design into something metallic and tangible. That’d be neat.
- Deep-Sea News: World champion leatherback wins Iron Turtle award
- pitchengine.com press release: World Champion Leatherback Wins Iron Turtle Award
Wrack Lines is a recurring series on this blog, featuring some of the artwork and designs I’ve created in Illustrator and Photoshop. In real life, a wrack line is the strand of seaweed and other debris washed up along the beach and usually indicates the high tide mark. But here it also refers to the vector-based lines of programs that I seem to be racking my brains against. I am a recreational graphic designer and amateur photographer. If you have constructive criticism, questions about techniques or additional resources you’d like to share, please contact me or leave a comment below.
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Thanks for your help and hard work! It looks great. I’m thinking it should be a different color scheme for each year per chance.
What a cool idea! I love the graphic. Following the Race online really got a lot of my students interested in deep sea habitats.
Love the name of the award and the graphic in deep, vertical dive position. Searcher was, of course, our favorite and I think should get the “explorer” award. Perhaps we need one of those next year.
Thanks for all you do for the ocean.
Kevin and Charlotte – I am happy to have helped and am open to ideas for doing something similar for next year. With enough lead time, anything is possible.