Sea Turtle Conservation in Greece

I came back from Koroni last Thursday with burns on two fingers where I had come into contact with a jellyfish and the fingers had swollen to the size (and color) of carrots. The look on everyone’s face when I walked up seemed to say “Liz, you’ve touched one thing too many…” I may be one of the most inquisitive and curious members of our group and I like to get up close and touch things when I know they are harmless. I had decided to snorkel between Koroni and Lefkas that morning instead of kayaking and it was a beautiful morning swim. The water was crystalline clear and very calm. I saw two small rays, a starfish, lots of very interesting fish and of course the jellyfish that stung me. I didn’t intentionally poke the jellyfish, though; I know to keep away from those!

Having a swollen hand hasn’t limited my work or shifts. Upon our arrival to Lefkas beach on Thursday we found a false crawl. In addition, just last night (Sunday) we had one new nest and two false crawls on our end of Mounda beach. We missed the turtles that made the false crawls but we saw the last one nest. I got to tag the turtle, which was pretty little. She was very quiet and seemed unperturbed by the tagging, she didn’t even yank her flipper back as hard as the others did. Matt, from the UK, who I was working with had a pair of night vision goggles so when we watched the turtle from a distance it was very cool to see her through the goggles.

With all the turtle activity recently the numbers have gone up to 13 nests and 13 false crawls on Mounda beach. Koroni/Lekfas has three nests and one false crawl and Avythos and Megasamos have 16 possible nests and a few more false crawls. Turtle activity has picked up quite a bit. We have had to tag six turtles so far, and we have seen more untagged females while snorkeling so we expect to do more tagging during the season. We have old as well as new turtles nesting—one turtle’s tag goes as far back as 1998, although Manuel, the program director, thinks that she was tagged previous to that– the project started roughly 20 years ago but some of the early data was not recorded properly  and has been lost.

It has been very exciting getting news from the people on night shifts and also the people on morning shifts about the nests and the tracks. We always have stories to share and experiences to compare. So far, the most exciting turtle watch has been by Aaron from Texas and Vanessa from Ireland, who came across the turtle as she was making her way up the beach from the water.

They watched her as she dug and abandoned two body pits and begin her trip back to the water without nesting. At that point, knowing that they still needed to record all her data, Aaron rushed up and grabbed the turtle by the shoulders. This was Vanessa’s first night shift (we had a turnover of volunteers; 3 people left and 4 new people arrived), so Aaron was telling her everything she needed to do as she washed all four flippers looking for a tag—but found none. Tagging is difficult while the turtle is in her trance laying the eggs but Vanessa managed to tag her on the first try while Aaron was wrestling with the turtle as she hissed and thrashed and dug her flippers in the sand. Vanessa managed to get all the shell measurements and a drawing of the shell pattern while Aaron struggled with the turtle. It was surely a different experience from the calm data collection when a turtle is laying her eggs!

Even though Aaron and Vanessa had a difficult time, they certainly had a good story to tell at the end of it, and that experience is not one to be forgotten quickly! My nesting experiences have been a lot more relaxed and exciting in their own way, although wrestling with a turtle does seem like a vigorous and exhilarating event that would be fun to try once.

This morning we had to relocate our first nest because it was located to close to the high tide line and there was danger of the nest being flooded. Although I wasn’t there in person, people got to pick up and carry the eggs to a new location higher on the beach where they could be better incubated. I definitely wish I had been there to feel and see the eggs up close and in better light. They look, and people have affirmed that they are, rather squishy and rubbery but also very smooth and slippery so you have to be really careful in the relocation process not to drop them. The morning shift had to move the eggs pretty quickly though since the heat was already picking up and they didn’t want to expose the eggs to long. Measurements were taken both for the old nest and the new nest they created and now all we can do is wait and hope that the relocation was successful!

I saw my first turtles nesting last night/this morning! We patrol Mounda beach at night in two groups and each group has two people. One group patrols half of the beach (Kaminia) and the other group patrols the other half of the beach (Potamakia). I was patrolling Kaminia with Ueli from Switzerland.

The first nest was on Potamakia. The group found the turtle at 11:40pm on Tuesday night and texted us to let us know they had found a nest. When we got there she had just begun laying her eggs. She was untagged, so we got to experience the tagging process.

Although the female enters a trance as she lays her eggs, when we clamped down with the tag gun she instinctively tried to pull in her flipper and it took a lot of strength to hold her flipper in place and finish the job properly. The turtle was beautiful, very young with a small shell and no barnacles or other distinctive markings except for a small spot on her shell, which was a lighter shade than the rest of her. Ueli and I had to leave early to patrol the rest of our beach but the other group watched the whole nesting process.

We found a nest a little later on Kaminia. It was very dark since the moon had set around 11pm.

I was leading looking for tracks when I saw a very obvious trail leading up the beach and a dark spot, which we assumed to be the turtle. We crawled up slowly and quietly until we were within close reach of the turtle and could determine the stage of nesting. It was 1:14am on Wednesday morning. The female was digging her egg chamber at this point and so when we

got up close she kept throwing sand at us as she scooped it out of the nest. A little while later she began laying her eggs, and we took all our measurements. Our turtle was tagged and was a slightly larger female than the turtle from Potamakia. Her tag number suggested that she had only been tagged last year and her shell size was only slightly larger so she must have only been a little older than the other turtle. When we were done with the first portion of data collection we settled down to watch the rest of the nesting process and record the times of each stage. We watched her lay all her eggs,

sometimes two at a time. The eggs are about the size of ping-pong balls, white and rubbery. They have a soft, rubbery exterior to prevent any damage to the embryos as the eggs are dropped into the egg chamber, dug about 20-50cm deep. After laying the eggs the turtle took a small break (she was breathing very hard throughout the whole nesting process) and then proceeded to fill the egg chamber, camouflage the nest and make her way back to the sea. She entered the sea at 2:02am.

Most turtles take between 1-2 hours to nest, and our female was on the lower end of that scale. Given the time she spent covering the nest and camouflaging it, we judged that she must have come out of the water around 1am, so the total nesting time would have been around 1 hour. The turtle on the Potamakia side took quite a bit longer. Watching the two females nest was an incredible and very exciting experience. From the time we noticed her tracks on the beach to the moment she entered the water and started swimming away I felt like I was holding my breath with excitement and awe. Sea turtles are very obviously meant for the water but their anatomy allows them to nest on the beach. While the female is nesting, you can sea trails of water from her eyes like tears, as if she is crying, but this is just one of the ways that turtles excrete excess salt from their system. The whole process was so

breathtaking a beautiful.

Our groups went to bed at 6am and the morning team took over the record the day’s data for the nest and its position etc. I really hope that we get more nests tonight so that I can experience the morning data collection too. The whole process is so fascinating! Turtles come to shore to lay nests during the nesting season approximately every 12-21 days after they mate in late April through May and early June. Since our first two nests were on June 5^th we are expecting those turtles to come up and nest again within the next week or so and we are hoping for more females to come up and nest also. All in all, last night was a fantastic shift!

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!