TurtleTurtle

About

TurtleTurtle is the first of its kind interactive sea turtle photo-ID game!

You can play endlessly trying to match sea turtle faces and in the same time learn facts about their lives! Some of the turtles in the game have stories that go back more than 3 decades ago! When you play, these stories and facts along with a photo of the turtle you match appear in a pop-up window.

Your task is to match turtles using photo-identification (photo-ID): Every turtle has a unique pattern of scales that does not change in time. This left side pattern is different to the right side one but there are still enough similarities to allow you to match turtles from opposite profiles. Yet, this is considered a much more difficult task than matching turtles from photos that show the same profile! Sometimes the photos are not very clear which also makes the matching difficult!

There are 4 difficulty levels depending on the quality of the images and the head orientations: Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert. AI algorithms can also do this matching task but they may struggle with low photo quality and different orientations. Can you beat them?

All the turtle photos in the game are from the loggerhead sea turtle population of Zakynthos Island, Greece. This is one of the most important and best studied sea turtle populations in the Mediterranean. You can get involved in sea turtle conservation there by volunteering with ARCHELON, the Sea Turtle Protection Society of Greece.

Did you see a sea turtle in Zakynthos and want to learn more about its story? You can submit its photo here and you will immediately receive all the information we know about it via an email!

Do you have your own sea turtle photo-ID project and you would like to create such a game with your photos! We can help you set it up for free and host your game in your own server. You don’t have to send us your data! Please contact Kostas Papafitsoros if you are interested!