Nesting season fieldwork
Hatchling season fieldwork
Other nesting beaches
Environmental education
Community life
Other activities
Involvement in research
During nesting season (late May - early August) a team of volunteers patrols the nesting beach every night (22:30-05:30) looking for turtle tracks. When a team finds a nesting female, data about the turtle (health, size, tag number) is collected.
The eggs hatch after a period of about 55 days (August - September). During hatchling season the beach is not patrolled at night so that hatchlings can get to the water with as little disturbance as possible. Volunteers are on the beach early in the morning and also during the day. Volunteers keep the beach clean, remove obstacles that may prevent the hatchlings from reaching the water safely, and collect data on nests and hatchlings also with excavations.
In the last few years we have started surveying other turtle nesting beaches of Kefalonia. The number of nests found on these beaches last summer show that night watches here are probably not worth the effort. However, to keep track of the fluctuations in these still relevant nesting sites, we are discussing the possibility of morning surveys.
The main constraint is transport to the beaches. Roads are in bad conditions or don't exist at all, and some are distant. Possible options are a combination of some of these:
- bus
- bicycles
- hitch hiking
- walking
- kayak (see picture right)
All these methods have been used in the past, and much depends on personal preference.
Some of these beaches (Koroni, Lefkas) are very popular with some volunteers who like it 'wilder', because of the opportunity to spend some time on a remote beautiful beach with few or no people at all. They are better suited for the fittest volunteers, although anyone could get there (and everyone did).
They are not for people who need an ice cream while they are sunbathing, despite the fact that in Koroni they just built a new small kiosk for this purpose.
Volunteers take part in another vital action: environmental education. Tourists and locals are informed on how to reduce or avoid actions that could harm turtles (even the most harmless-looking, like a sandcastle) through leaflets, presentations, permanent exhibitions in our Environmental Centre. During the day volunteers staff the Environmental Centre and the info desks in the village of Katelios and on Mounda beach (see picture right).
Volunteers are involved in duties related to community life. Volunteers take part in campsite activities in shifts: cooking, cleaning, gardening, small maintenance works. Normally each volunteer cleans and cooks at least twice a week, they keep a small organic garden for fresh vegetables and they do maintenance to the campsite. The campsite is a small community in which everyone gives their contribution to make it work (see picture right: campsite table).
Other activities include, but are not limited to, cleaning Katelios beach, taking part in turtle rescues when we get reports of injured or dead turtles, organizing the Environmental Festival in August (see picture right), etc.
We must stress that our Turtle Project does NOT focus on pure research. We focus on the conservation of the small existing population of turtles. We try to keep the handling and disturbance to the animals and their habitat to a minimum. Collecting data on nesting and population patterns is very important, but it would be nothing if the nesting beach and the bay were to disappear under the cementification pressure. Collecting data is not the only nor the main activity of volunteers. Education, mostly of tourists, is at least as important.