Sea Turtle Conservation in Greece

So far, and although it is still early in the season, we have found four nests on Mounda beach, two nests on the Koroni/Lefkas beach, four nests on Avythos and three nests on Megasamos. We have had eight false crawls on Mounda beach, which is high enough to suggest that we will either have more nests on Mounda soon, or otherwise the lights and sun beds on the beach at night are in fact affecting the nesting of the female turtles. This has been a slow season so far, which can happen because turtles do not always nest every year. But turtle activity is picking up since just last night we had two nests on Mounda.

On the conservation side of this project, apart from cleaning the beaches of rubbish and alerting tourists to turtle activity we often go snorkeling in the morning and late afternoon and monitor other marine life in the area.

While snorkeling during the past two weeks we have come upon turtles on multiple occasions. I have seen two females, untagged and still a bit small, which means that they are probably still too young to breed and nest. I have also come across three males, which can be told apart from the female by their long and thick tails.

I found one of the turtles (who we call Wendy because of a distinctive ‘W’ marking on her shell) while she was feeding. This was very interesting to watch– turtles eat rather slowly, with their eyes closed and seem to relish nosing about in all the sea grass and kelp on the reef. After she finished feeding and noticed me, I followed her for about half an hour, diving down to clean off her shell and swim with her until she was ready to be left alone and swam off.

The life that exists underwater here is very colorful with a lot of variety. We have come across starfish, sea urchins, Moray eels, a fire worm, an octopus, and many different varieties of fish, kelp, sea grass and algae. There is also a lot of coral and sea sponges, although there doesn’t seem to be much variety there. We have depictions and explanations of all of these in the Environmental Centre to explain to tourists, so it is great to snorkel and understand exactly what I’m telling them about since I’ve seen it!

There are some sad aspects to the calm and unhurried life of sea turtles–just the other day we got a call form a German tourist reporting a dead turtle on the beach of Sision. It was reported to be missing a flipper and have lacerations across its shell. We sent a team out to investigate that area, but there was no sign of the turtles or anything that could have caused it damage.

We hope that talking to fishermen, who usually cause the most harm to turtles, will reduce the problem of finding hurt or dead turtles. Sea turtles do not have any predators once they mature and so their danger of extinction has arisen from human exploitation and hunting. We have had to swim out and cut through fishing nets and drag them out of the water to prevent unsuspecting turtles coming to shore from harm.

We do have interactions with fishermen and try to get across the importance of their cooperation in the endeavor to protect the sea turtles native to this area, but usually it isn’t that simple. Enforcing the law that protects the beaches of this area and the life they sustain has never been an easy task and we can only hope to increase and improve our relations with fishermen and hotel owners in the area and reduce their negative impacts on the turtles.

The day is split into sections and various people are allocated to different shifts throughout the day. We have work to do in the Environmental Center, which tourists have the opportunity to visit and ask questions about the project, donate money to the research project or volunteer their services. This shift lasts three hours in the morning and another three in the evening.

There is a night shift starting at 10pm until 6 or 7am. During the night female turtles come up onto the beach to nest and it is our responsibility to monitor the beaches (using only the light of the moon since flashlights could scare the female from nesting). We have to report any false crawls where turtles have abandoned nesting as well as actual nests. When the female turtle is laying her eggs, she enters a trance which is very hard to disturb and this is our chance to record her tag number (or tag her if she is untagged), measure the curved and straight length and width of her shell, sketch the pattern of barnacles or other parasites on her shell, record the time of night and the duration of each stage of nesting; the total duration of nesting is anywhere between 1-2 hours. All of this is used to compile a yearly report which we can also use to compare to previous information known about the turtle. If we are unable to catch the turtle while she is nesting, or if she is making a false crawl, we have to catch her if possible on her way down to the sea and record her tag number. This can be difficult because sea turtles weigh about the same as humans. If one person is unable to restrain the female while the other records the data, sometimes a turtle must be flipped onto her back, however this is only used as a last resort.

Once the sun comes up, the morning beach shift (around 6am) has to locate and record the exact positions using a GPS system of the nests reported by the night shift. We have constructed markers all the way along the beaches which facilitate this process but it can be quite time-consuming. We actually had our first two nests of the season just last night, so we spent quite a bit of time this morning recording all of this information, which we use to relocate the nest after the incubation period of 50-60 days.

We have an afternoon shift on the beach from 5-8 which is used to talk to and educate tourists about sea turtles in the area, pick up garbage and request from hotels which have sun-beds on the beach to move them off the beach for the night. This is usually a pretty relaxed shift, although it can be hard walking the 3km of beach back and forth since it is usually still quite hot.

Finally, we have what I call the super-shift! This shift requires us to monitor a beach located about 13km away. You have to go in the morning to find turtle tracks before they have time to be erased by the waves or unsuspecting tourists, so we are required to leave the house between 6-6:30am.

First you have to bike up a long and very tiring hill for approximately an hour and drop the bikes off at the beginning of a path down to the sea. The walk to the beach takes about 20-30 minutes. Once you patrol the first beach which is rather short, you have to canoe over to the next beach which takes about 30 minutes. The next beach is approximately 2.5km in length, and it takes roughly an hour and a half to patrol the whole thing. Sometimes you have to replace missing markers that have been moved around using the GPS. Once you’re done, you canoe back and walk up the hill to the bikes and begin the nice bike back down hill. The whole shift takes around 5 and a half hours and is probably the most physically draining, although very beautiful since the beaches are susceptible to very little tourism so they are gorgeous and very clean, with beautiful clear water.

Unfortunately, since the only time female turtles come up to nest is during the night and males do not leave the water at all to visit the beach after birth, it is very hard to get pictures of sea turtles. We are not allowed to take pictures at night so as not to scare the turtles and stop them from nesting. There is a permanent population of turtles that live nearby in the town of Argostoli, and come out to feast on the refuse from fishermen at 9 or 10am. Hopefully I will have some pictures from them, or maybe some under-water ones from morning or afternoon swims when the turtles are roaming the waters near the beach. Otherwise, I’ll have to wait until the hatchlings emerge, when I will most probably have a good opportunity to catch many hatchlings on camera!

The drive from Thessaloniki to Kefalonia, an island in the Ionion Sea just off  the coast of the Peloponese, started with a slight hiccup! I was supposed to get  a ferry on June 1st from Lefkada to Kefalonia, but due to bad weather in the  morning, all ferry services were canceled for the day–even though when I  arrived it was bright and sunny. So, I managed to break up my  long journey  and enjoy the beautiful scenery and sunny, warm weather of Lefkada.

Arriving in Kefalonia at 10am on June 2nd, I made my may to Kateleios and the environmental center I would be working at. The beaches I passed were beautiful; glittering waves crashed on the shore, the landscape was clear and the people I passed were happy. I immediately felt at home and comfortable with my surroundings, and this feeling was fortified when I met my colleagues.

There are people from all over. The leader of the project is Italian and there are people working here on the project from New Zealand, Canada, Finland, Switzerland, USA, England, Ireland, Scotland and Germany. we have had a few false crawls onto the beaches, where mother turtles come up to nest but get scared away by noise, light or smells or don’t like the spot they’ve exited. We hope to see a nest very soon, within the next few days at least because there has been a lot of turtle activity.

There is a lot of work involved, with a lot of physical exercise but it is definitely rewarding. I should have some pictures up soon, and some more detail on the shifts that we do and what is involved!

Elizabeth Willis ‘13 will be spending the summer in Greece working towards the protection and conservation of the endangered sea turtle species Caretta caretta. She will spend the summer collecting data on the sea turtles such as age and size as well as nesting time, date and position.