A Turtle Watcher's Diary
2010 Season
15th July 2010. Farid's Story
I belong to the country people call Pakistan. I live in a
big city of Pakistan, Lahore, where you can’t see the wonders of
nature and wildlife. Since my childhood I was deeply attached to
nature and wildlife. Being a shy guy most of my time I spend in my
home with my plants and pets. They are very close to my heart. I
always wanted to work for wildlife and the environment, but never
had a chance, because what I study is quite opposite to it. I study
Journalism and Sociology, which doesn’t connect me with my passion
and dreams. But I believe if passion is true you can achieve
everything. So my Life took a new turn when I applied for this
project. Mostly all the volunteers are from Europe. I asked my
project leader Robin Snape before applying. He said I can give it a
try. In the beginning of 2010 I got email from Robin. He asked will
I be free in summer. After listening this I was jumping.
This happiness brought worries in my head. How I am going to arrange
money? I was in need of 2 hundred thousand ruppes! But God did a
miracle. My cousin agree to lend me this big amount. But he wasn’t
able to give me the full amount, so I had to sell my most precious
thing, my motorbike. It was so hard. There was only one thing in my
mind I have to make it. There were so many hurdles in my way to get
North Cyprus money, visa and biggest problem was how to send Robin
500 hundred pounds fee? It took weeks to figure it out. But in the
end I was finally ready to fly. The most hardest thing was to leave
my mother. I had not been away from my mother in past 20 years for a
single day. But that’s life so I left my city and got to another big
city called Karachi. Where I took a long journey to Istanbul. I was
so happy to see Istanbul beautiful airport where I stayed for 12
hours.. At 7 pm I left for North Cyprus. I got here around 9. I was
excited to see North Cyprus. But things turned out as my worst
nightmare when the airport authority didn’t let me go through. They
wanted to confirm my reason of being here. So I spent my whole night
in the airport locked in a room. Next morning Robin came to take me.
So finally I took a long breath in the fresh air of North Cyprus. I
hadn’t seen Sea in my whole life. So it was mind blowing to see
beautiful sea.
When I came here there were just me and 3 more people. In the
beginning I was terribly home sick. I shed a thousand tears on the
roof top of Goatshed. The worst thing was that I wasn’t able to call
my mother for 5 days. But after 5 days I finally talked to my mother
that was so relieving. The first 3 weeks were hardest weeks of my
life. But now I am getting to know everyone. Robin, Tom are very
nice guys and rest of the people are nice too. Especially Project
Leader Kim who is so nice, she is the only one who always comes to
ask me whenever I don’t feel well.
Seeing turtles and working with them makes me feel like I am living in a National Geographic channel. Everything is amazing. This project is very important and special to me. I know in the end its going to open new door for my next destiny. I love the struggle of female turtles how much effort they put to give birth to new life. They spend hours and hours to secure their hatchlings. Its amazing and makes me realize the importance of struggle. Now the Goat Shed is full of people. But its good. All these people and I have so many differences because I came from another part of the world. Their views and ideas are different to what I believe in. But its good because I am learning so many things from these people. Everyday is new lesson here. When I am done with this project I hope I’ll have changed a lot. These turtles are now special part of my life and always will be. I hope my journey will go well. I am going to see Karpas soon. So I can see other sides of North Cyprus.
21st July 2010. The Season So Far
Volunteers from North Cyprus, UK and other countries have been
working hard on the beaches across North Cyprus since May 2010. This
mid season update will hopefully give you a good idea of how the
project is going and more importantly some useful information on how
the turtles are doing this season.
The Loggerheads and Greens are laying their final egg clutches for
the season. To date there have been 35 loggerhead nests and 70 green
nests on the primary nesting ground of Alagadi. In addition to this
there have been 184 loggerhead nests and 29 green nests on the other
beaches along the West and Northern Cyprus coastline. Furthermore
the locally led turtle conservation project operating on the Karpas
peninsula has recorded many Green nests this year.
One of the primary successes to surface from this season so far is
the relationship that has been established by the MTRG with the
local fishermen. Communication has vastly improved which has lead to
an improved relationship and has acted as a catalyst for improved
conservation efforts and new branches of research into how fishing
affects sea turtles in the Mediterranean. This morning a loggerhead
turtle was caught in a net by a fisherman at Kaplica. After the
fishermen contacted us we received the turtle at the harbour, tagged
it and released it at Kaplica. Perhaps the adult female turtle will
some day lay eggs on Alagadi beach, or it may be recaptured by
fishermen in the future, providing information on her movements.
As the season moves into the second phase, we are starting to see
the first hatchlings emerge from the beaches. Clearly this is a
massively rewarding part of the project, and we invite people to
come down to Alagadi beach to experience the hatchlings bravely
making it to the sea for themselves.
Anyone wanting to see the hatchlings is advised to ring the MTRG
project base (AKA the goatshed) to find out when the next hatchling
excavation will be. As the season moves into August, this will be an
almost daily occurrence! Remember only one hatchling in a thousand
will survive to adulthood, so we welcome you to egg them on! The
telephone number is: 0090 (0)5338798533. Also keep an eye on this
blog, which will be updated daily by 9am with details of any
excavations planned day to day.
31st July 2010. Excavation For the Nation!
Hello to all you turtle followers out there - I am sorry that it has taken me a while to announce this excavation for today but better late than never!!
We do have an excavation on this evening, and we ask that visitors who would like to come watch tonight, to meet at the goatshed at around 6:15pm where we hope to start the exo around 6:30pm. For those who have mobility problems the excavation this evening is right next to the beach bar so alternatively you can meet us there, just look for a mass of red t-shirts.
We strongly ask visitors who would like to take pictures to make sure that the flash is off as the light is so intense that it can damage the sight of the hatchlings.
I forgot to say one more thing - we will not be releasing the hatchlings that come out of the nest today, as our protocol has changed from last year. Any hatchings that we excavate will be taken back to our base and will be released at 9 that night. For future excavations we will be taking bookings for hatchling releases of up to 30 visitors. However, for the rest of this week we are still having visitors down on the beach for night work and thus we can not take any more people down to the beach until this has finished on the 4th of next month (August).
So please come down and visit us and the hatchlings!
4th August 2010. My Turtle Experience
In just a week of working for the Marine Turtle Project I have
witnessed some of the most amazing events of my 22 year life, so
far. I am very familiar with North Cyprus and have been to its
beautiful beaches and climbed the barren mountains, but seeing a
Green Turtle hatchling rising from the sand to see the star lit sky
for the first time is something I find very hard to describe in
words.
When first arriving here at Alagadi I didn’t know quite what to
expect, but I was thrown into the deep end on my first walk. An
adult Green Turtle had emerged from the water and began its search
for a suitable area to lay its eggs, making sure I could not be seen
by the turtle I began to army crawl behind and watched it dig out a
body pit with its powerful flippers. After around an hour of digging
the body pit and then the egg chamber she started to lay her eggs,
hopefully not in vain as only 1 hatchling in a 1,000 makes it to
maturity (around 20-30 years old). Not only was I lucky to see a
laying turtle on my first ever walk but this turtle needed a
satellite attached which I watched in an almost trance like state, I
will definitely be looking out at www.seaturtle.org where you can
follow the movements of turtles which have a satellite.
The nesting season has now almost come to an end, with three days of
no nesting activity we are beginning to accept that those types of
experiences are coming to an end. However the end of the nesting
season marks the beginning of the hatching season which is every bit
as amazing. So far I have been lucky enough to see 36 Green
hatchlings emerge from a nest and other nests with one or two
hatchlings appear (these nests are expected to “boom” very soon).
Once hatchlings are found and measured they can be released back to
the sea, each time it amazes me how their natural instincts guide
them to the vast Mediterranean Sea where they will hopefully mature
into adults and return to Alagadi.