Wow, it's been a while ... not that there hasn't been alot happening. First, let's have a cup of coffee and settle down (sometimes there is no electricity just when you need that early morning cup to get going):
The turtle activity has picked up - we had the first nest on Kokkinos Pyrgos, which I found together with Reggina, the Archelon co-ordinator for Crete, and Evalina, who offered to join in as we searched for the eggs:
I am also checking another small beach the other side of the fishing harbour. It gets checked most days but I was away for three days on other turtle survey work (more on that later) and I saw something which could be a nest but the tracks were really faint and I could be imagining a camouflage. However, with it being in such a sensitive spot - right next to a taverna - I marked it all up to thoroughly check it later with my new volunteers:
And here they are! Sofia and Katerina and I set to today and thoroughly dug the camouflage but ... we found no nest. However, it's better to be sure. Katerina goes back to Heraklion soon but Sofia has kindly offered to do some morning walks at Kokkinos Pyrgos while I am monitoring the other beach we have added this year and this will also give me a bit more time to catch up with other things (like preparing the nest shades for the hatching season).
Thanks again for the help Sofia and Katerina!
So, to the other beach. It's an extra 2km which is not a public beach and which is an excellent site for the turtles as there are very few lights. To be able to follow the population trend for the Messara turtles it will be really useful to know what is going on there so I now have permission to survey there two or three times a week, arranged with the help of Reggina.
On our first walk we found five tracks! It is not strictly necessary to look for the eggs here unless we belive the nest to be close to any lights or in danger for any other reason, such as being too close to the sea. Some of the tracks came a long way up - we had one at 29m from the sea - but one nesting attempt was much closer, at only 11m:
We decided to look for eggs and found them pretty quickly:
It looks as though they had been there for more than 24 hours as the embryos have started to attach and the eggs were somewhat harder than in a fresh nest, and under those circumstances moving the eggs is very likely to endanger the developing turtle embryo, so we have left them in place. The nest may be inundated a few times during its incubation, as we usually have high waves in July, but most nests can survive this reasonably well. It's all marked up and will be monitored over the coming weeks.
Nest count so far: 2 definite plus several very promising nesting attempts, as well as the other nests recorded further along the Messara Bay by the Matala team.
The turtle activity has picked up - we had the first nest on Kokkinos Pyrgos, which I found together with Reggina, the Archelon co-ordinator for Crete, and Evalina, who offered to join in as we searched for the eggs:
I am also checking another small beach the other side of the fishing harbour. It gets checked most days but I was away for three days on other turtle survey work (more on that later) and I saw something which could be a nest but the tracks were really faint and I could be imagining a camouflage. However, with it being in such a sensitive spot - right next to a taverna - I marked it all up to thoroughly check it later with my new volunteers:
And here they are! Sofia and Katerina and I set to today and thoroughly dug the camouflage but ... we found no nest. However, it's better to be sure. Katerina goes back to Heraklion soon but Sofia has kindly offered to do some morning walks at Kokkinos Pyrgos while I am monitoring the other beach we have added this year and this will also give me a bit more time to catch up with other things (like preparing the nest shades for the hatching season).
Thanks again for the help Sofia and Katerina!
So, to the other beach. It's an extra 2km which is not a public beach and which is an excellent site for the turtles as there are very few lights. To be able to follow the population trend for the Messara turtles it will be really useful to know what is going on there so I now have permission to survey there two or three times a week, arranged with the help of Reggina.
On our first walk we found five tracks! It is not strictly necessary to look for the eggs here unless we belive the nest to be close to any lights or in danger for any other reason, such as being too close to the sea. Some of the tracks came a long way up - we had one at 29m from the sea - but one nesting attempt was much closer, at only 11m:
We decided to look for eggs and found them pretty quickly:
It looks as though they had been there for more than 24 hours as the embryos have started to attach and the eggs were somewhat harder than in a fresh nest, and under those circumstances moving the eggs is very likely to endanger the developing turtle embryo, so we have left them in place. The nest may be inundated a few times during its incubation, as we usually have high waves in July, but most nests can survive this reasonably well. It's all marked up and will be monitored over the coming weeks.
Nest count so far: 2 definite plus several very promising nesting attempts, as well as the other nests recorded further along the Messara Bay by the Matala team.
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