2024 SEE Turtles Program Wrap Up
2024 was a strong year for our efforts to protect sea turtles and support coastal communities worldwide. We had a record number of baby turtles saved, helped clean up literal tons of plastic, and provided support for efforts to fight the tortoiseshell trade and grow emerging leaders in communities near turtle habitats.
A huge thank you to all of the supporters, travelers, businesses, and as always, our incredible network of partners around the world who are implementing these programs. None of this success would be possible without any of you!
2024 was another great year for this program, setting a new record with an estimated 6,194,000 million hatchlings saved with 40+ grants, supporting 220 local jobs. Those funds include grants to 11 new partners in Ghana, Togo, Mexico, Bangladesh, Panama, and Colombia. For 2025, we are planning to provide an additional $200,000 in grants to our local partners around the world. Check out all of our partners from 2024 and before here.
We initiated new multi-year grants for on the ground work by our local partners Fundacion Tortugas del Mar (Colombia), The Leatherback Project (Panama), and Latin American Sea Turtles (Costa Rica). These grants will help to train law enforcement, research the trade, and build alliances with the tourism industry. We also worked with Care2.com to promote our pledge to avoid turtleshell which got more than 6,500 signatures. Our staff has also been working to grow our network of tourism partners working to educate travelers about this trade. For 2025, we will be finalizing upgrades to our award-winning SEE Shell App that uses AI to identify illegal turtleshell products, providing more funding for local campaigns, and reaching the public about this urgent issue.
In 2024, we provided 12 grants totaling $24,000 cleaning up more than 200,000 lbs of waste. Those funds supported more than 400 coastal residents, helping to generate income for them and conservation efforts. Those grants included 4 grants for building new recycling efforts in 3 countries (Ghana (2), Kenya, and the Philippines. We are expecting a big 2025 for this program, as we are receiving great support from the Adventure Travel Conservation Fund and the Footprints Fund in addition to other supporters including our Sustainable Travel Sponsors. We are projecting $50,000 in grants to 15 - 20 cleanup and recycling efforts around the world this year.
2024 was our best year ever for our trips including trips to Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico, and Panama. For the year, we had 93 travelers generating more than $130,000 in conservation benefits. That includes $45,000 in profit for our general fund (which keeps our lights on) with an additional $20,000 generated for Billion Baby Turtles, Too Rare To Wear, and Plastic programs. We brought back our popular trip to Colola, Mexico which we filled. For 2025, we brought back our popular trips from previous years, Cuba and Galapagos, both of which have filled. We are starting on a very strong footing for 2025, 80 people registered for this year’s trips.
We’re very excited about the potential for this growing program. We recently changed the name from the Sea Turtle Inclusivity Fund to better reflect the program’s goals. We provided $10,000 in grants for 5 community leaders in 2024 (one in Costa Rica and 4 in Africa). In addition, we are providing $1,000 to the International Sea Turtle Society to support travel of African participants to this important event. We are hoping for 2025 to be our best year yet with a projected $13,000 in 5-6 grants. We will also be exploring ways we can better support our grantees through additional training and opportunities to advance their careers. Learn about all of our grantees here.
2024 was another solid year for Sea Turtle Week. We reached more than 7 million people during the week, added in dozens of new partners for the program around the world and grew our social media following by 15%. We partnered with Oceanic Society to encourage organizations globally to conduct beach cleanups during the week. With additional funding from one of our sponsors, we provided $5,000 in grants to 12 organizations conducting cleanups and Oceanic Society funded an additional 7 cleanups.
