Laura Jim and Marc Rice traveled to Honolulu this week to join the rest of the STRETCH Team for a one day “next-steps” meeting and  one day of presentation on STRETCH topics at the 5th annual Sea Turtle Workshop hosted by Hawaii Pacific University (Friday, Oct. 10, 2025).  

The meeting on Friday centered around what we have learned from the first three Cohorts of loggerhead turtles, what we might expect when we release Cohort IV and what we might want to change in terms of release point and data acquisition by the tags.  The question is, basically, do we need more detailed data or do we want to program the tags so that they will transmit longer and give us longer tracks.  Right now, Cohort II and III are transmitting every other day.  We could get longer battery life by limiting the transmissions or by having the tags transmit every third day, for example.  

On Friday, everyone gathered at HPU in the morning for a full day of presentations about North Pacifric loggerhead turtles and what we have learned based on the current data we have gathered from Cohorts I, II and III.  Laura Jim gave a talk about HPA student involvement in sea turtle research in general and how HPA students have assisted in STRETCH satellite tag attachment in Nagoya.  Marc Rice highlighted STRETCH outreach efforts through the STRETCH website (loggerheadstretch.org) and the STRETCH blog  (strechupdates.blogspot.com).