All the lovely people
It was just Valentine’s Day.
This is a photo of the sign on the back of our office door. It was handmade many Valentine’s Days ago by Robyn Murphy, who was our first artist-in-residence at the Canadian Sea Turtle Network. She did it to make us smile and we’ve never taken it down.
One of the reasons it resonates for me is how supportive the international sea turtle community is. Because sea turtles inhabit large swaths of the globe, they unite people who care about them—representing dozens and dozens of countries. I remember the last International Sea Turtle Symposium I attended. The ISTS is the annual meeting of sea turtle researchers and educators from around the world. I remember watching from the edge of the large room housing the student poster presentations. The conversations bubbling between people were enthusiastic and good natured despite language barriers (people grabbed colleagues to act as impromptu translators), cultural barriers, ideological barriers. It seemed to me that there in that room was the kernel of what would bring peace to a tired world.
Today, out of the blue, I had a call from Dr. Abeer Bilbeisi. “I am calling you from Jordan,” she said when I answered. She is the founder of the Jordan Society for the Conservation of Turtles and Tortoises. She was wondering if we could help her with ideas for engaging members of the fishing community there in sea turtle conservation.
It didn’t surprise me that someone I’d never met from the other side of the world would call to chat and brainstorm ways of helping sea turtles in their region. We laughed. We tried to understand how our contexts were different and how we might use all that we knew to help across our cultures. We assumed the best of one another because we operate in the context of global sea turtle research, built on the shoulders of people who set out to create a community with great love.
“We’re friends now, aren’t we?” Abeer said, before we hung up.
It was a declaration more than a question.
I looked up at the sign on the back of the door, which I can easily see from my desk.
Turtley, I thought.