A Turtle watcher's Diary

2009 Season

Tuesday, August 4, 2009. The truth about turtle poo
This week has seen the loss of more of our long time volunteers. Sam, Kate and Alex left for England after a raucous night of singing, dancing and twister at the goatshed and Adrian (aka ze German) left for Germany this morning. We’re going to miss them loads so I have compiled a little list of Cyprus memories for them.

1) Kate pit tagging herself in the thumb
2) Sam wondering if you could become pregnant with turtle babies if you were in the wrong place and the wrong time
3) Adrian sleeping in the hammock
4) Alex attempting to play volleyball and leapfrog other volunteers in the pool#
5) Adrian sitting in the shower fully clothed bathing a cut foot and a cut chin
6) Sam and Kate failing to balance standing on an upside down kayak in a prohibited pool.
7) Alex drunkenly wondering bay 1 and 2
8) Sam’s many many food fights
9) Adrian’s roof time

So bye to all of you and we miss you loads.

So this week has been really busy. We still have adult turtles coming up to lay on Alagadi, which is very late in the season. Plus we’re really in the swing of the hatchling season now so we’re having public excavations on most days. If you would like to come and watch an excavation please phone 05338678188 after 9:30am and we will let you know if we have an excavation that afternoon.

Last Sunday we were invited to a pool party at Penny’s house, which was brilliant. The party entailed an entire day of fantastic food, quad bike racing, pool volleyball (with some dubious rules), a treasure hunt and everyone, with out exception, being thrown in pool fully clothed. It was a bedraggled but happy group of volunteers that trudged down to the beach for night work that evening.

A few of us managed to go on a small adventure the other night to go and see Harry Potter in Nicosia. After an extortionate taxi ride, during which we feared for our lives, we finally turned up 10 minutes late to sit in a cinema so long and narrow we could only just make out the screen from our seat. Even with that and the picture looking distinctly like a 70’s horror film in a strange mixture of sepia and flashing lights, we still managed to sleep through almost the entire film. (apart from Collsy, who obviously doesn’t work hard enough). Oh well, this is what nights off are all about.

Another dead turtle washed up on Lara beach this week. So obviously it was necessary to stink out the goatshed by doing an autopsy and using the excrement as a green fertilizer. Turtle poo usually consists of small green fragments of runny liquid. If you would like to observe some, please come to the goatshed, where a turtle has been previously squeezed and emptied on our garden. Please excuse the smell, it’s only partially the volunteers.


Well I better go as I can hear the entire goatshed clamouring for tea, which apparently they can’t make themselves.

Toodaloo. Celli

Saturday, August 8, 2009.Wind down
Things are really winding down now with the adults although last night we unexpectedly had a green nest taking the total on Alagadi to 181. If you check out www.seaturtle.org/tracking you'll see that all of the females that we are tracking have left and some of them have hit the coasts of Syria, Lebanon and Egypt already. Hatching however is picking up and we expect this to peak towards the end of this month.

We have been enjoying the cooler weather these last few days and with a later start on the beach at night time an extra hour in the day here and there goes a long way. Today Tom and I took a trip to the south side crossing the border at Lefkosia where we indulged in some western food and drank coffee on the top floor of Debenhams over the city. Our visa's were due to run out so this jolly was a strict necessity.

Eight of the volunteers have been invited to help out with the national celebrations at Erenkoy today. But despite the lack of manpower we are going ahead with an excavation this evening.

Hope to get into town soon to catch up with you Angela....Monday perhaps. And thanks to Pat and John for dropping off the cash that you raised on the stall.

Robin x

This page is a mirror of a blog written by volunteers of the Marine Turtle Research group. Information about the MTRG can be found here.

For more information about the turtles of North Cyprus, their nesting and hatching, follow the links.