Blue Turtle Seduction Benefit Show
By Team JamBase Nov 12, 2009 • 9:15 am PST
Popular Jam Band to Play Intimate Benefit Show to Support the 20-Year-Old Sea Turtle Restoration Project
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Blue Turtle Seduction is carrying out its commitment to environmental protection as the band gains prominence in the music festival scene. Band members and crew will be travelling from their South Lake Tahoe home in a vegetable-oil-powered bus that has transported them to festivals throughout the West.
Through their unique, upbeat mix of rock, bluegrass and hip hop, Blue Turtle Seduction will add a joyful element to Big Splash and a chance for event-goers to get up and dance. Their most recent album, 13 Floors, showcases the band’s tight musicianship and dynamic dance party spirit. Each song features Blue Turtle’s unique interchange of melodic guitar leads, layers of strings and woodwind textures, with focused rhythm and upbeat lyrics. The CD is packaged in sustainable and biodegradable materials in keeping with the band’s environmental mission.
Shara Martin, the band’s road manager and a former sea turtle veterinary technician, was instrumental in engaging the band to play for the Sea Turtle Restoration Project’s benefit. “We are pleased to have the chance to contribute to the Sea Turtle Restoration Project’s great work with our music. Being a part of the solution, and making people happy at the same time means a great deal to us,” says Martin.
Biologist and ocean activist Todd Steiner founded the Sea Turtle Restoration Project two decades ago to stop the slide of sea turtles to extinction. By using science and the threat of extinction to mobilize people around the world, the organization has saved hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of disappearing sea turtles from death due to human activities.
Mentored by the late maverick environmentalist David Brower, Executive Director Steiner, 52, founded the Sea Turtle Restoration Project in 1989 to end the slaughter of 50,000 sea turtles in Mexico for skins and shells to make shoes and jewelry. After the slaughterhouse was closed and sea turtle products banned internationally, Steiner turned his attention to one of today’s biggest threats to the species: accidental by-catch in tuna, swordfish and shark fleets.
Sea Turtle Restoration Network is marking its 20 year anniversary at the Dave Brower Center in Berkeley, CA, on Saturday, November 14. The Big Splash event is a fund-raiser for sea turtle conservation work and is open to the public. More details below and online here.
Additional Sea Turtle Restoration Project Information
In addition to closing the sea turtle slaughterhouse in Mexico, STRP’s successes have included compelling 20 nations to use turtle-saving gear in their shrimp fleets; creating policy reform that instituted a 200,000 square mile Leatherback Conservation Area (LCA) along the California and Oregon coasts; closing harmful longline fisheries in Hawaii and along the West Coast and stopping the World Trade Organization from gutting U.S. sea turtle protection laws. Read more here.
Throughout most of its history, Steiner and a crew of at most 10 or less full-time staff, and legions of volunteers, have worked out of small rustic offices in West Marin – first an old chicken coop and now a stone farmhouse on leased national park lands. Funded by donations and private foundations, the group’s budget has been a fraction of the larger U.S. environmental non-profit groups, but its impact has been significant and reverberated worldwide.
Big Splash – the Sea Turtle Restoration Project’s 20th Anniversary Bash – will be held 7 to 11 p.m., Saturday, November 14, 2009, at David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704. Tickets are $85-$100 with a student/activist discount. RSVP here. For more information, please call 415-663-8590.
