Last Journey for the Leatherback?

Forest Knolls, CA — The nonprofit Sea Turtle Restoration Project has released the new documentary, Last Journey for the Leatherback? by the Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker Stan Minasian (dir. The Last Days of the Dolphins?, The Free Willy Story: Keiko's Journey Home). Last Journey for the Leatherback? will make its worldwide television premiere to 24 million U.S. homes on Link TV (DIRECTV channel 375 and Dish Network channel 9410) on Friday, December 10, 2004 at 20.00 (EST).

"Sea turtles are really symbolic of what’s happening to the oceans as a whole. As go sea turtles, so go, will go, the ocean," explains Dr. Earle, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, in the stunning natural duotone opening sequence of the film as dozens of newly hatched leatherback sea turtles crawl to the water under the moonlight.

Scientists predict that the giant Pacific leatherback sea turtle, which has survived unchanged for over 100 million years, could vanish in the next 5 to 30 years, if current threats from wasteful industrial longline fishing are not curtailed. The female nesting population of leatherback sea turtles in the Pacific Ocean has collapsed by 95 per cent in the past 20 years. The leatherback is the largest sea turtle, measuring nine feet from head to tail with the largest ever recorded tipping the scales at 2,000 lbs.

Last Journey for the Leatherback? is a hard hitting documentary that combines science, activism and rare footage of endangered sea turtles, to tell the gripping story of sea turtles, the new icon of the ocean environmental movement. Sea turtles are quickly reaching the status of dolphins and whales and conservationists are becoming increasingly alarmed and active in their fight to save these gentle giants, and to stop the wide-spread impacts on the world’s ocean ecosystems. After the premiere Last Journey for the Leatherback? will move to the festival circuit and eventual broadcast on the Caribbean Broadcast Union, Link TV (US, DirectTV and Dish Network, and PBS (US),

For more information visit:
http://www.seaturtles.org
http://www.savetheleatherback.com
http://www.gotmercury.org
http://www.linktv.orgprogrammingprogramDescription.php4?tz=0&code=leather
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/08/27/WBG0N8D7EV1.DTL&type=printable