Diving Into 2024
Happy New Year! The Rays of Gratitude team had a really big 2023, but 2024 is here and we are ready to take you along on our journey to spread the rays of gratitude as far as they can reach.
We have some really cool things planned for 2024, starting off big. As you all know, we are in the midst of the Save Our Shells: A Lifeline for Sea Turtles campaign. Wildlife conservation is one of the three main pillars of our mission.
Wildlife conservation.
Children’s rights.
Helping underserved communities.
The Save Our Shells campaign falls under wildlife conservation. To kick off 2024, our team is headed to St. Thomas with our partners, The Hawksbill Project and The University of the Virgin Islands Center for Marine and Environmental Studies. This is our first official in-water sea turtle research and conservation effort. Our team will be accompanying the university on in-water research on hawksbill and green sea turtles. In addition, we will be partnering with Scott Eanes and The Hawksbill Project to teach up-and-coming turtle researchers proper protocol for catch and release of turtles. This will all be documented by Dan Mele Photography. While we are there, we will also be touring a local coral restoration organization and meeting with their team discuss how our organizations might be able to work together in the future. We’d like to give a special shoutout to our corporate sponsor, TekWissen, for helping make this trip possible.
We are hosting the Save Our Shells Online Auction from April 13th-April 20th, 2024. There will be lots of amazing items to bid on for the entire family. All of the proceeds received during this auction will go directly into the Save Our Shells campaign, which means 100% of the proceeds will go towards helping critically endangered sea turtles. Stay tuned for more information on this event coming very soon.
We have some very fun guests lined up for our Ocean Guardians: Voices for Sea Turtle Conservation interview series. Subscribe to our Youtube Channel to follow along with the great conversations we’ll be having over there. You can also read the interviews right here on our blog.
Our Gratitude Illuminated newsletter is also a great way for you to keep up with all of the amazing things happening here at Rays of Gratitude. You can subscribe here. We promise not to spam your inbox. You will only receive updates about our projects and events coming up.
Our team is also busy planning the next three turtle research trips coming up in 2024 with The Hawksbill Project. Honduras, St. John, and Grenada are all on the list. With enough funds, we hope to add the first ever hawksbill sea turtle survey in Okinawa, Japan to that list.
We appreciate support of readers like you, and thank you for following along on our journey. We couldn’t do any of this work without the support of each and every one of you.
Here’s to 2024. It’s going to be a good year.
