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Billie Wins This Year’s Leatherback Turtle Race From Costa Rica to The Galapagos Islands

By Jane Goodwin | May 1, 2007

Well, the Leatherback Turtle Race is over, and the winner is. . . . Billie. For a while there, it looked like Stephanie Colburtle was going to win, but Billie, swimming along at all of three or four mph, sped ahead.

Comedian Stephen Colburt, for whom Stephanie Colburtle was named, was very pleased at the honor of having one of the leatherback turtles named for him.

"I’m a huge fan of shelled reptiles. Normally, I’m no endangered species hugger… but this year, nation, one of those 11 turtles is named after me: Stephanie Colburtle the turtle.

"Folks, there’s my beautiful adopted daughter!" he said, showing a photograph of a leatherback turtle on the screen.

Colbert also remarked, "Next to an eagle, a turtle is a perfect animal to represent me," later referring to leatherbacks as "eagles of the sea."

As we reported earlier, the leatherback turtles had been tagged with satellite tags, and tracked over their annual two-week journey from Costa Rica to the Galapagos Islands.

But now it’s all over, and Billie is the winning.

According to Reuter’s "some 600,000 people logged on to the website of the two-week Pacific Ocean marathon, aimed at drawing attention to the endangered species whose numbers have plummeted 95 percent over the past 20 years.

Lisa Bailey, spokeswoman for Conservation International, and one of the race organizers, says that ". . . only 50 turtles showed up to lay eggs this year (at Playa Grande, a key nesting ground in northern Costa Rica where the race started) down from 15,000 in 1989."

Billie, this year’s winner, was sponsored by the Offield Center for Billfish Studies in Oceanside, California. Second place was comedian Stephen Colbert’s "Stephanie Colburtle."

Colbert tracked his turtle’s progress on his Comedy Central show.

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Topics: Language, Culture, Friends and Family, Travel / Relocation, Destinations, Lifestyle, Retirement Overseas |

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