Tour de Turtles Race in the Florida Keys Allows the Public to Track their Favorite Turtle in Real Time

KEYS VIDEO ADVISORY   August 2, 2025

Contacts: Mary B. Haban, Mary@fla-keys.com (813) 210-8585

Chad Newman, Chad@fla-keys.com (310) 283-8441

Story: Tour de Turtles Race in the Florida Keys Allows the Public to Track their Favorite Turtle in Real Time

Locator: Marathon, Florida Keys

Video Link: Click Here

Photo Link: Click Here

Photo Captions: Below

Audio Link for Radio: Click Here

B-roll and photos of the August 1, 2025 release of Haven, an endangered green sea turtle participating in the Sea Turtle Conservancy’s Tour de Turtles. Includes file footage of Haven during rehabilitation at The Turtle Hospital and a SOT from Sea Turtle Conservancy Communications Coordinator Lexie Beach.

TRT: 2:50

Filename: KeysTourDeTurtle.MP4

Video Source: Florida Keys News Bureau

Tour de Turtles Race in the Florida Keys Allows the Public to Track their Favorite Turtle in Real Time

MARATHON, Florida Keys – Why be in a hurry to go somewhere else when you already live in paradise? That’s what a 35-pound green sea turtle named Haven probably thought as she took her sweet time entering the ocean at a crowded beach in the Florida Keys on Friday, August 1, 2025. 

Fitted with a small transmitter satellite tag, Haven was the only rehabilitated and only juvenile sea turtle in this year’s Tour de Turtles event.

The satellite tagging is part of Sea Turtle Conservancy's Tour de Turtles program — a fun, educational journey through science, research, and geography of sea turtle migration using satellite telemetry.  

Haven is an 8-year-old endangered green sea turtle who spent the last six months recovering at The Turtle Hospital in Marathon, Florida after being wrapped in fishing line and covered in fibropapilloma (PRONOUCNCED Fibro-pap-a-loma) tumors. Following months of rehab, laser treatment, and cancer-fighting eye drops, Haven was declared healthy and ready to return to the sea.

Participants in this “race” of sorts, are typically nesting female adults that migrate several thousand miles over the course of three months from August to October – proving endurance matters more than speed. The satellite tracking continues for about a year, which is when the transmitters typically fall off. And according to Sea Turtle Conservancy Communications Coordinator Lexie Beach, there’s a reason why juvenile sea turtles are “laid back” and might not venture far from home.

“We don’t expect them to migrate far distances, so they hang around the Keys and they’re feeding on seagrass, on jellyfish,” she said. “We anticipate Haven will stick close to home and probably just travel maybe a couple hundred miles.”

The turtles are equipped with a small satellite transmitter attached by a special epoxy to the tops of their shells.

“Every time she surfaces, that satellite transmitter will send a ping, and it will update either on the Tour de Turtles website or our Sea Turtle Tracker app,” said Beach.

Haven was rehabilitated at The Turtle Hospital, which has released more than 3,000 sea turtles since its founding in 1986 as Florida’s first licensed turtle rehab facility.

“We’re especially interested to see how her migration pattern and her behaviors might differ from the wild adult nesting turtles that we’re tracking,” said Beach.

The satellite-monitored journey gives researchers valuable data about the migratory patterns of sea turtles while raising awareness about the threats they face. It also gives the public the chance to follow Haven, and all the other turtles as they make their way across the sea. You can track them in real time by visiting www.TourdeTurtles.org.

###