Turtle Beach

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13th June 2011.

Had a long lie until 7:30! The air was alive with the rythmic buzz of Cicadas and Crickets telling me what I already knew....it was hot....damn hot!! A quick look out of the tent at blue skies and a heat haze rippling the baked soil under the Olive trees and I ventured out in search of coffee. I shooed the chickens out of the kitchen and quickly found all the ingredients for breakfast, there was no one about? Next to the rustic camp kitchen is a shaded eating area and I hunkered down in there watching the ground bake in the sun. The sound of voices in casual conversation filtering through the 3 m high wall of bamboo that stands between camp and the beach, told me someone was coming and then a couple of happy faces appeared from a narrow gap in the bamboo and I met Brian and Molly.
Brian is from South Carolina and speaks with a soft confidence which makes him instantly likable. He's the project leader and he introduced me to Molly, from Minnesota, who has been volunteering on the project for about 3 weeks already. Today I would be given my induction and was not expected to do anything other than get settled in.
The induction took fifteen minutes and was a power point presentation explaining the Archelon Logger Head Sea Turtle Protection & Research Societies objectives, codes of conduct and how the project at Kalo Nero operates. After the presentation I met Hanna who is collecting her research data for her PhD into Environmental Volunteering motivations and social anthropology. I was pleased to hear that all training is on the job and so I'd be straight into actually doing something rather than watching or shadowing.
So with the theory out of the way I did some much needed laundry and rode into the village of Kalo Nero, which is 2.5 km away, for some essential supplies and a stand your spoon up in it Greek coffee.
Lazy afternoon swimming and lying on the beach until the call came up for people to cut bamboo?? Apparently the protection side of the project is mainly focused at the nests. We locate the nests, place a mesh grid over them and then hammer half meter lengths of bamboo in to stop predation by stray dogs and red foxes (vulpes vulpes....for the scientists). Tomorrow is a 5 am rise and on the beach for 5:45 to do the morning nest survey's and track survey's??
There are 16 of us on camp, there is a rota displayed (in Greek!) which tells you which beach sector and who you will be working with on each morning survey. there are 4 beach sectors, A, B, C and O. Each sector is about 2.4 kilometers long. Some of the volunteers are on night survey's which run a minimum of 4 hrs from 11 pm until 3 am and concentrate on A and O sectors which are the 2 sectors nearest camp. Tomorrow I'm on B sector with Gary, a mechanic from New Zealand, and Sara who works as an entertainer at the Sealife Centre in Birmingham??
Each volunteer pays 20 euros into a weekly food shopping kitty and that covers all food for 7 days.......the menu is vegetarian??? Meat is at your own expense. God I hope there are some good vegetarian chefs!!!! Dinner is communal and we all sit under the shade, tonight it's veggie fallafels??
Dinner was good! Tomorrow's chef is going to have to be good to match that!
I'm not the oldest here!!!!!! Reggie from Manilla, a Phillopino IT consultant, is a couple of years older than me and a prime candidate for mid life crisis! But he's a nice guy and I think happy to know there's someone his age here now as most are in their mid twenties.
Shit....beach volleyball......on the beach????? Do they know I'm an old fat bastard??? but I played anyway....making up a truly international court, Aussie, Kiwi, Portuguese, Scottish (me), English, Polish, American and German. Laughed a lot and finally stopped when we couldn't see the ball in the dark :-)..........................................I was knackered but a quick swim sorted me out :-D

14th June 2011.

Beat the alarm....surprise surprise? Coffee then we packed our equipment and headed off for a long walk on the beach. When you do B sector you have to walk A sector as well to get back to camp.
Within 10 minutes we were at our first turtle track of the day. Turtles come onto the beach under the cover of darkness to nest or maybe just to have a wee look? This turtle had come for a wee look and had an attempt at digging a nest but decided not to bother and head back out to sea. Our next track a hundred meters later, led to a nest. The turtle digs a hole with her back flippers about 60 cm deep, lays about 100 eggs, which look exactly like ping pong balls, then covers them neatly and finally flicks sand with her front flippers over the nest to camouflage it. We dig into the nest to reveal the top of the egg chamber, not as easy as easy as it sounds because you have to judge where the egg chamber is? Once the egg chamber has been found we measure the distance from the sea, the angled distance to survey posts, which are set out at 50m intervals along the top of the beach, and the parallel distance from the chamber to the 50 m post. We then take a GPS reading of the location and note down any other digging attempts or swims, which are when the turtle appears to swim in the sand, or body pits where the turtle has sort of shoogied down into the sand like you do when you first sit on your beach towel and get comfy. If the nest is less than 18 meters from the sea we do a relocation to prevent inundation by the sea which would seriously affect nest temperature and oxygen levels in the nest. All of this has to be done within 24hrs of the eggs being laid as after that period the embryo's will have attached themselves to the shell and the shell will have begun to harden. At this stage the embryo is extremely sensative to vibration and is facing up ready for the climb out and the sprint to the sea in about 60 days. Once all measurements are taken, we cover the nest over with sand, place a wire mesh grid over it and hammer in the bamboo. We then place an information sign at the nest and give it a nest number. This nest doesn't need relocating and so we moved on.
After a few more nestless tracks we found a 2nd then a 3rd and finally a 4th nest. It was 10:30 and hot :-) time for the walk back to camp and then a cooling swim in the very salty, but very colourful Adriatic Sea, today its Aqua Marine and for the first time I can float effortlessly which I did for ten minutes.
I'm rota'd in for bamboo collection this evening, but the heat of the afternoon is for us to do what ever we want, so I rode into Kalo Nero and found an internet cafe to write my last road trip blog.....Loukas Taverna, soon to become a much visited spot.
Bamboo collection is hot and sweaty work so is kept to an hour and a half....thankfully.
Another veggie dinner........Zuchini parcels and ginger rice...even better than last nights???? Maybe this veggie thing isn't so bad, but I pity tomorrow nights chef as this will be really hard to beat!!!!
We played poker until late, there was a primary school teacher, an anthropologist, an environmental engineer, a zoologist, a mechanic, a geography student and me....quite an ecclectic mix?

15th June 2011.

I worked A sector this morning, we had 2 nests and one crazy track where the turtle had dug 4 nest attempts then had a sand swim then a body pit then buggered off back into the sea. I left camp for a swim but unfortunately interrupted a couple, not from camp, having an intimate moment on the deserted beach lol! I gave it an hour, didn't look like a tantric episode, then safely reached the water without interrupting anyone ;-)
Just an hour of bamboo cutting tonight......Dinner was the best yet, Curried potatoes, Lentil Dhal and sticky rice.....bloody hell I'm cooking tomorrow???!!!!!!!!

16th June 2011.

I've noticed that the sea is like a moon stone, yesterday it was turquoise with ripples of aqua marine and some slivers of deep blue, today its deep blue with a sky blue margin about 100 meters off the beach. I wonder what mood that means?? The sky is different today as well, its blue but heavy and it feels a bit broody, like something is going to happen?
C sector today, 2 nests and no other tracks. The beach here stretches almost all the way to Pyrgos 45 km north of Kalo Nero, it's the 2nd most important nesting beach of the Loggerhead turtle after the island of Zanti. Archelon can only afford to survey and protect the area we are covering, but last year's nesting season, which runs from mid May to mid September, recorded 962 nests, a bumper year as the average is around 650? Although the turtle lays about 100 eggs it is estimated that only 2 or 3 out of every thousand survive through to adulthood? This is a guess though and part of Archelon's program is to carry out research so a better picture of the loggerhead turtle's life. Once they hatch and scurry down to the sea they won't return to nest for about 20 years. During this time they have been known to go into a state similar to torpor where they slow their metabolic rate and oxygen use down to a bare minimum and can lay on the sea floor, partially buried for up to 3 months! Pretty amazing when you consider they have no gills and have to break the water surface to breath!! I pondered all of this on the walk this morning and concluded that I like turtles, who couldn't?
The broody skies were up to something, black heavy clouds billowed onto the mountains about 10 km away like smoke from a steam train in a tunnel. I went for a swim and was treated to a fantastic thunder and lightening storm which shook and slapped the mountains behind Kyparissia for half an hour, it was like watching an angry wizard conjuring up all his power to try and chastise the mountains. The sea was dark blue and appeared to be keeping its mouth shut for fear of getting some of the treatment the mountain was getting???
Right.....dinner....shit........sod it.....I'll make something up??? Cougettes steamed in mint with a basil oil, spinach added for the last ten minutes. Fry off some red onions, garlic and more basil. Spaghetti with eggs and basil mixed in and a side salad of big fat tomatoes and peeled cucumber with black olives drowned in olive oil and white wine vinegar, some grated parmesan and crusty bread........pheewww....it went down well :-D
Brian approached me after dinner and told me I appear to have a natural aptitude for the work, would I like to train as a night survey leader as they want to expand the research project now that the nesting season is picking up pace?......... Does a bear shit in the woods?????? First training will be tomorrow night, I'm really looking forward to it.

17th June 2011.

O sector today, this beach is by the village of Kalo Nero and so we put warning tape around the bamboo so people can easily see it. The beach is also narrow so we are unlikely to do any relocations. 2 nests marked and all other tracks noted, we walked back to camp. I was with Tomas, the environmental engineer from Lisbon, Portugal, and Fran who has been working as a ski instructor in France and Italy for 5 years but is now going to London to study Osteopathy, turns out she's from Uckfield in Sussex which is where my Aunt Marion lives? As we got near camp we saw our first snake crossing the track. I couldn't identify it but it was about 2 meters long with a thin hungry body and dark scales with brown diamond markings along its back?
One of the girls got flashed on the beach this morning? Apparently it's a Greek thing?
In an attempt to get a little sleep before tonights survey I lay under the makeshift bamboo shade that was built on the beach outside camp. When I closed my eyes I was in shade.....when I opened them I was marooned in scalding hot sand!!! Thankfully I had borrowed some factor 30 sunscream just incase and so I was just baking hot rather than burnt to a crisp :-D
For my first night survey I was shown a video of how to tag turtles, inject the microchip, take all the measurements and how to keep safe and how to restrain a turtle. Archelon also explain why they put the turtle though this discomfort and how the data collected is being disseminated throughout the Mediterranean loggerhead sea turtle projects which run in Italy, Malta, Tunisia, Turkey as well as Greece.
Tonight I shall assist and act as scribe. We focus on A sector as any more would be too much for the scientists to cover and keeps the research focused on one area. I wrote down tag numbers, microchip ID numbers, Carapice lengths and widths, Carapice markings and barnacles or mussels found hitching a lift. All this is done just after the turtle has laid her eggs. How it all works is.....first find your turtle...in the dark....then approach quietly from behind and see if she is nesting. If she is we can use our red light torches and actually watch her dig the nest and lay the eggs, during this time we get our gear ready. The microchip injector is scanned to ensure a working chip and note the reference number, a metal tag (same principle as ringing birds) is readied in a tool that looks like a big pair of pliers, a plastic tag is readied in a different pair of pliers and a leather punch is readied. We get bentithine (probably wrong spelling) animal antiseptic wipe ready and then wait for the turtle to start covering the eggs..............then it's all action, 1st check for old tags and scam her shoulder for a microchip.........if nothing found it's time to start tagging her, 1st is the microchip....wipe the front left shoulder with the anticeptic then find the muscle and try and hold an extremely strong turtle's flipper while you inject it with a massive needle...that done.....next is the metal tag....same flipper, find the webbing between the 1st and 2nd claw...then try and line up the pliers while the turtle is trying to flick sand over her nest and get you to let go of her flipper.....that done....move to the back right flipper......hold the flipper and find a spot between the claws and the scales to puncture with the leather punch!!! Don't get ripped by the claws!!!! once you've pierced her flipper, get the plastic tag pliers and squeeze the tag into place then make sure it's on properly.......once the tags are on it's time to take measurements.....Length about 90 cm....width about 70 cm........last to be done is the tail....by this time she has finished the nest and is heading for the sea....grab her tiny tail which she keeps curled under her plastron (shell under her body) and pull it out so its extended, measure that! During all this, the times of egg laying are recorded, egg covering, camouflaging, leaving the nest and returning to sea. Wave her off then mark the nest with all the tag numbers so that morning survey can record it all.
It was great....I'm on morning survey....Saturday night I can do all the tagging if I feel confident enough???? Sunday I've got a day off!!!!

18th June 2011.

Only one nest and no other tracks on C sector today. The sea is back to Aqua Marine with some sky blue about 200m off shore. The sky is blue and clear and the mountains behind the beach are green with pine trees, olive groves and low semi arid scrub bushes with their thick small leathery leaves for holding water......everything looks happy.
I fell asleep in my tent about 8 am and woke up melting at 12....I spent the rest of the day drinking peach juice and Frappe's!!!!!
Frappe is Greece's National drink, everything is decided over Frappe!!! It's great!! Get a slim jim glass.....put coffee and sugar in as if you're making a cup of coffee....then put about an inch of cold water in.....get a mini electric whisk and whisk it until the mixture is a sandy brown and frothed up so thick it doesn't pour out if you turn the glass upside down.....add 2 or 3 ice cubes and top up with milk....drink it through a straw.....aaahhhhh it's superb and much better than it sounds!! I made a mocha version as well, just add the cocoa powder to the milk before you pour it in mmmmmmmmhhhhhhhhhh!!!
There's a watermelon festival tonight in a nearby village but I'm on night survey so will go tomorrow.
We left camp walked down to the beach and there was a turtle just digging her nest! I crawled up behind her and watched as she started laying eggs, they come out of a tube like thing she extends into the egg chamber and fall out in 2's 3's and 4's.......I gave the signal for my scribe to approach and we readied the equipment. She started covering and so I checked her flippers and scanned her shoulder for a microchip......there was a microchip but no tags so I got going.....1 st wrestle her for her flipper then get the metal tag in...ok......now the back flipper.....punch the hole through...ok....ram the plastic tag in...ok......take the measurements...........shit she's on the move.....quickly run round the front and cover her eyes with the palms of my hands making sure I keep my fingers out of the way so she doesn't bite one off!!! as soon as I covered her eyes and applied a little pressure she gave out a thraspy long hissing sound and pulled her head in a bit and stopped moving....get the measurements as she'll be off in a second.....check the carapice (shell).......she's close to the sea now....grab her tail....she's not impressed and hisses at me....measurement....ok.....done!!! Hanna was my scribe and trainer....."that was brilliant!" I did one more........this one went more smoothly as she stayed longer on the nest and we injected a microchip as well :-)) it's amazing....such a great experience!!! I've now been promoted to night survey leader???? First volunteer of the season to be doing it!? lol....I'll be taking other volunteers out on night surveys starting next week and means that the research now has 3 taggers!!!!! We found no more turtles that night and headed back to camp at 3 am.

19th June 2011.

I only slept for 4 hours but it was a good 4 hour sleep. I'm currently the talk of the camp because I did the restrain and all the tagging last night?? Everyone thinks its great and now there are 3 taggers it means more people get to do night surveys which is the best part of the project.....nesting is good but watching a turtle lay its eggs and getting up close to them is an amazing experience and I'm so glad I chose this project.
I'm now in Loukas Tavern writing this and sitting next to me are two boys who look about about 7 or 8 playing online video games and smoking Marlboro reds.....they look like they'll live to a hundred but they're tough look will probably mean they'll have a hard life, but for now they're confident and carefree.

I've got laundry to hand wash so that's the blog for now......no photo's of turtles because we aren't allowed to use flashes at night, only red lights so as not to disturb the turtles.....

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