A Turtle watcher's Diary
2009 Season
Monday, June 8, 2009. The Male with the Large Tail
Good morning! We’re a few hours late with our blog today due to an
extremely exciting night that required all hands on deck, but I’ll
come to that later.
Saturday night saw us splitting into two groups, some down to the beach and 4 of us to a fundraiser. On the beach 2 Loggerheads were found nesting, one on Alagadi and one on Iki. Whilst measuring and observing these, Kate managed to tag not the turtle, but herself. Luckily she’s fine but we’re all intrigued to find out where exactly she goes every day! Our Logger friend from the night before also returned for another 6 attempts at nesting before going back into the sea, bringing her grand total of body pits dug up to nine. We’re all keeping our fingers crossed that she’ll actually lay sometime soon, in the mean time its nice to see a familiar face on the beach each night!
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| Robbo and Mating Greens |
Meanwhile, Becca, Tom, Sam and I went to the fund raising turtle race and dinner, where we eagerly anticipated our spaghetti bolognaise made with real meat! (not an aubergine in sight). We weren’t let down. The food was fantastic and the people unbelievably friendly. We all had a small bet on the turtle races, where Sam and I came out on top and Becca and Tom didn’t. Through generous donations and a bit of competitive spirit over 800 YTL was raised, which is a fantastic sum of money and will go a long way in helping the project. Thank you to everyone involved for helping us and giving us a wonderful evening off.
The next day we were up early to go west to walk the horrifically long beaches to find any nests from the night before. Tom and I found our first day time nest, a Loggerhead we have named Heather. After much prodding and digging of the sand we eventually found her egg chamber, bringing the total number of nest found in the west up to two. Unfortunately the other nest had been partially predated by dogs, but we have high hopes for the remaining eggs.
So last night! After a farewell dinner for Penny, the beach patrol set off. Half an hour later, Ainslie burst into the restaurant where we were still sat, shouting about a male turtle. We flung some money on the table and sprinted down to the beach where we found a pair of green turtles mating. Kate, Tom and Sam had seen what the believed to be a large rock steadily moving up the beach. The female had determinedly carried her male all the way on to the sand with her mind set on nesting! After Kate, Tom and Sam executed some very professional commando rolls in order to observe them unseen, we all gathered round to wait for her to begin to lay. A few hours later, during which time the female was simultaneously mating and digging her body pit and egg chamber, we were starting to get restless. Finally she began lay and the volunteers swung into action. Kate and I took the female to tag, and eventually as the male came off he was surrounded in tables from the beach bar so that we could quickly get a satellite on him. Everything went well and we now have one of the only males tagged with a satellite transmitter, which will be fantastic from a research point of view.
An unbelievable exciting night, which I can’t imagine ever being topped, but it seems you never know what’s around the corner at the turtle project!
Tuesday, June 9, 2009. Cat sick in the
West and " excavation" on Alagadi
Hello all!
It has been an interesting few days here at the goat shed! There were some welcome new arrivals: enthusiastic new volunteers! Emma, Jim bob and Kristine. The North was thoroughly checked by Tom Kate, Emma, Celli and Kristine for turtle activity and juice was drunk in bounty. Oh and a nest was relocated.
Ainslie, Robbo, Jimbob and Ana and I headed out West to set up our new home away from home, so the beaches there could be checked with more ease. We arrived only to find that no one seemed to know where exactly the keys had walked off to, so then had to break into our own house, with the help of a locksmith. Here’s hoping the Turkish man who kindly abandoned his house into our keeping doesn’t return too soon. The water and electricity was switched off, something resembling a pile of cat sick smothered the kitchen floor and there were strange slightly terrifying pictures on the walls. But luckily there were no long dead cats lying around like last time.
After much cleaning and calling of electricity men, the house was in a more welcoming state, so we went off for a very delicious kebab.
Night watch was a busy one. 3 turtles laid: two Greens, one Loggerhead and one Green FCA. So our visitors enjoyed good views of some of the turtles!
One of the highlights of the night for Kristine, Sam, Celli and Adrian was “extensive excavation” of Alagadi 2 due to unforeseen nest marker movement. Kristine says “It was the best hour of digging in my life”. The egg chamber was successfully sighted in the end.
Today most of the turtle gang went into town for a nice change of scenery with the exception of a few manning the goat shed, and Sam and Adrian who did “man work” and built our new bin holder thingy. Wayne from down the road assisted with the cement with Sam optimistically calling out “I can do this in ten minutes.” Yeah Sam 10 minutes. Riiiiiight. 2 Hours later the workmen returned to the goatshed.
Everyone headed out for Night watch tonight with full capacity of visitors. Good luck to them we say. Libby and Kristine
Thursday, June 11, 2009. Bruce almighty
As the season warms up (literally and metaphorically) we’re getting
busier and busier, with 7 turtle sitings last night and 15 visitors
to the beach! For this reason the blog is becoming slightly less
regular but we’re keeping you up to date the best we can.
Tuesday night we had 2 U-turns and a nest on Alagadi 1, as well as
an attempt on Iki. One of the U-turns on Alagadi one, came right
next to midpoint and made its path all the way around where
volunteers and visitors were sitting, creating some pandemonium! The
turtle on Iki decided to head straight up to the dunes where the
sand is so soft her body pit kept caving in. After 2hours, several
attempts and a lot of cursing by volunteers, she decided enough was
enough and headed back to the water around 4 am.
Yesterday day time, Tom and Emma headed out north to walk the
beaches up there, whilst we went down to Alagadi to repositions
posts that beach goers had used as goal posts and GPS all the new
nests. After a few fights over the good hammock before dinner, we
were ready to set off again for another night watch.
Sam and Kristine took Iki, where they had 3 greens come to nest
simultaneously. Sam, having lost one in the dunes decided that it
was Kristine’s turn to look for her rather than get himself any more
dirty up there. Unfortunately none of these laid but we hope for
their return over the next few days.
On bay 3 a turtle came up and started to dig her egg chamber,
unfortunately another turtle decided to ascend the beach and the
same time and lay directly in front of the first. While digging her
body pit she not only pelted the first turtle with large stones and
bits of debris but managed to hit her in the face with a flipper!
Needless to say the victim went back into the water a little
disgruntled, without laying. We have decided to name the latter
Bruce due to her spectacular punching skills.
Hopefully it will be another fun packed night tonight, but in the
meantime I’m making the most of a little peace and quiet to soak up
the sun, lie in a hammock and do some much needed laundry!
Celli
Saturday, June 13, 2009. Pie and beach
times.
It’s all good times round at Casa de Goatshed, with my first
night-off of the season, yay! Abandoning my nightwork clothes,
headtorch and emergency 3 sticks for the night, I even showered and
began preparing a feast fit for people who spend the night with
their heads in turtle behinds. This meant veggie pie with puff
pastry that didn’t actually puff (there was some complicated folding
business that I left out), an amazing salad created by Mr German,
followed by apple crumble and sheep yoghurt (an alagadi staple). I
think a few situps, lunges and buttcrunches were required when
walking the beach after that lot.
Yesterday saw the arrival of Ella, a volunteer from last year, who
was met with way too much excitement at the airport by me and Emma
(in the swank new car of course). We almost had a bit of whiplash
when I forgot it was an automatic and pressed the brake as the
clutch, but aside from that we arrived home safely and sent Ella out
on North after flying all night. Obviously. If any of you haven’t
been to Ercan airport you should add it into your list of must see
tourist destinations. Where else can you watch people get off the
plane and collect their baggage from the floor above, while making
rude faces at them through the windows?
Moving on to the business of our little green friends, the North
coast group were unhappy to find a Turkish fox feasting on one of
our turtle nests when they arrived on the beach yesterday. The nest
was totally predated, sadly, and the fox got a good earbashing for
his trouble. So, from now on the nests on the North coast beaches
(Esentepe, Tatlisu, Kantara, Kaplica) will be caged with special
metal pegs along with our usual flat caging to stop predation from
fantastic Mr Foxes. This should hopefully stop one of the biggest
threats to egg survival and help that 1 in 1000 to hatch. Also, well
done to Emma and Tom for caging with heavy, rusty metal which is
really a pleasure to carry around ; )
Onwards to night work and last night the loggerheads finally made an
appearance after days of only seeing greens (I’m biased towards the
loggers, they have more character than greens and are uglier. Not
every turtle can be beautiful you know) with 3 logger nests and 2
green nests over our two beaches. The volunteers were run ragged,
along with our 4 visitors, trying to stay with each turtle AND make
sure the beaches are walked every 10 minutes. We’re a well-oiled
machine now and 5 turtles on the beach are nothing we can’t handle!
Well done to Celli for spotting the highly endangered German
joke-back turtle and observing it for a few minutes before being
given the fright of her life as Adrien jumped out of the hole with a
logger carapace on his back. I hope you had fresh underwear on the
beach Celli.
Here at alagadi we work hard and we play jokes on people. Then we work some more and some more and then we sleep. Becca xx
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.