A bit of an update!

This is probably long overdue, but things are pretty busy at the moment. After 2 months with mostly around 6 or 7 volunteers, we suddenly have 10, and 6 more arriving in the next week (including 2 from Leeds Met!). This might sound like a good thing (and it is!) but they all need training, and writing the rota is a nightmare.

So on to the turtles...

Today we found our 19th nest, which unfortunately needed to be relocated. This can normally be done very quickly, but I had 2 new Greek volunteers with me which meant answering lots of questions! A good morning for training though! That nest, and a couple more tracks with swims and body pits meant they have now seen more turtle stuff than some of the other more "experienced" volunteers (one poor Danish girl hasn't yet even seen a nest yet!).

I'm very happy with the number of nests we have so far, at the beginning of the season I'd have been happy with 15, and didn't really hope for anywhere near 20. Now it seems we should easily make that target, and perhaps, with unmarked nests, we might get up to around 25. Last year there were only 11 on this stretch of beach.

We also put out the first lot of nest shades out this morning, our first nest, which seems like it was laid years ago, is due to hatch in around 5-10 days, hopefully before my visit to England.

This all meant that morning survey, which has been taking 1.5-2 hours, took 5 hours today! I'd promised I would go help Mel out on the first kiosk shift straight after MS, but now I will only make the last hour! What was worse though, is that the supermarket only had sugar free Milko. Disaster!

Myrtles Morning Survey

Hi All,

It's been a while, but I thought I'd share a few photos from a morning survey last week, I was walking the beach by myself, so thought I'd get a few snaps in too!
It was quite a busy morning, within 500m of starting the beach I found this:

It's an abandoned egg chamber. The chamber had lots of rocks in it, so I assume the female turtle decided that it was unsuitable - she then went back into the sea.

Not much happened for the next kilometre or so, but then I found this!


It is a pretty much perfect nest, with a distinct camoflage pit and camoflage. A short dig was all that was needed to find the eggs


The only problem however was it was far too close to the sea. If we have northerly winds here the sea can come very far up the beach, and this nest would be washed away. So I had to relocate the nest (with a little help...)

20 minutes later, and the 123 eggs were safely positioned further away from the sea.


Things are slowing down a bit turtle wise, we have been stuck on 14 nests for about a week now!

I'll try to write more soon!

John

Things that go BOING! in the night!

The cicadas have started calling. The fact that they haven't been has seemed very strange. They were one of the first things I remember hearing last year.

Not that there hasn't been plenty of wildlife here. If you sit, watch and listen for the half an hour around dusk (like I am doing now!) you can see and hear all sorts. The smaller birds, mainly warblers and tits soon stop calling and find their roosts for the night. Then the Red-footed Falcons arrive and you see their amazing aereal acrobatics whilst they feast on the many flying insects. They catch and eat the bugs in-flight whilst swooping and gliding over and between the bamboo and mulberry trees.

As the light fades they are replaced by several bats, which I think roost in the mulberry trees. The insects don't stand a chance! Once the light really goes you can often hear bull frogs shouting, although this is happening less now. You can also occasionally hear what I beleive to be a Scops Owl calling, i'd love to go find it, but don't really stand a chance, their call can be heard for miles!

That's also when the creatures in the bamboo start to make themselves known (based on the evidence from Tasmania, a certain BIG Northerner would completely brick it! ;)) I'm not even sure what they are, they are possibly rats, all I know is they make a racket, and when they decide to fight in the trees they like to use my tent as some kind of trampoline... It's not a nice way to be woken up at 3am!

On a side note, things with the turtles are going well, we have 8 nests in Xania now, on our 5km stretch of beach. Last year they only had 5 nests at this point, on 14.5km of beach, and none on the bit we are monitoring!

I'm off now cos the mosquitoes have come out and are starting to eat me alive!

That bloody cicada is still calling!!

Xania

I've been in Xania (Or Chania or Hania or any other of the dozens of ways of spelling it) for almost 2 weeks now, I have no idea where the time has gone.

We are starting to get nests now too - after a week without anything, we've had our 2nd and 3rd nests within 2 days, the last one was found this morning whilst I was doing some nest relocations in Rethymno (it's my day off, what else would I do??).

Our camp is very nice, much nicer than the Reth camp, there is no electricity, but it's good to have somewhere that is just your own. The beach is nice too, but it's long. Morning Survey is a 5km beach walk, with a 5km walk back to the camp too! The Xania kiosk is in a great spot too - look at this view!


There are quite a lot of birds around in the Xania campsite too, we have a family of Red-footed Falcons visit us every evening to feast on the flying bugs. We also have lots of small warblers - one of which flew inside a hot car and got itself a bit dehydrated. The poor thing looked like it was on it's last legs - lots of water and half an hour in the shade and it was back full of life and shouting for it's mum!


That's it for now, I've got a few bits & pieces to do before heading back over to Xania.

Cya!

John

Sorry!

It's been a while since my last update, but I have been very busy and haven't had much time to write! Anyway, I've installed a new app on my phone so I can write more often!

I have been in xania for just over a week now, things have been hectic. There wasn't much of a campsite when we got there, but this quickly changed, by the time Mik and myself (with a lot of help from Eric, a local musician/carpenter) got the kiosk built -which was much more difficult than the Reth one - the volunteers on camp (Lucy, Mel, Krysty and new arrivals Deborah and Colin) had pretty much sorted the roof, Walls and kitchen.

We started up the kiosk straight away, and Mik and I did the first morning survey on Thursday (with a massive hangover...) we found one set of tracks, but not much else. The beach we are monitoring is 5km long, and is mostly pebbles, so walking can be hard work - especially at 6 in the morning. After we arranged a couple of slideshows at local hotels, Mik left back for Reth. The following morning I started training the volunteers on the monitoring work, with instant success. We found Xania's first nest of the season!

Things are starting to settle down now, Krysty has left, which now leaves just me an 4 volunteers, but we might get a new person today.

Oh one last thing, I must say thanks to bernie 'clickety click' Dewhurst for taking the time out of his Crete holiday to pay me a visit. It was good to see a face from home, and the pizza ice cream went down a treat! Thanks!

John

One week in!

It's been a few days now, so it's probably time I caught up. Things have been busy here in Reth, the public awareness side of things is pretty much in full swing now, we are doing 6 slide shows a week and the kiosk is open 12 hours a day. The monitoring work will start on Sunday, which is when things will get really busy!

Last Sunday saw my first encounter with an adult Loggerhead Sea Turtle, unfortunately, it was a dead one that had washed up on the beach near our base, Camping Elizabeth. There were no obvious reasons for it's death, but the decay and amount of flies told us it had obviously been dead a while and just blown in with the wind we had last week. As is usual in these situations, the Port Authority are informed and they arrange for it to be measured and then the Municipality will bury it.

I have spent most of this week in the kiosk training the new staff, we've had a steady flow of new volunteers, and we are now up to 12 volunteers here, but I will be taking 3 of them with me to Chania on Tuesday. I have also been going along to some of the slide shows, as I'll need to start doing them myself soon. I really want to get over to Chania now, it will be hard work as we will need to get the camp built up, the kiosk built and start work on the PA stuff, but I want to be on my own site. I will also need to start doing the Chania monitoring work pretty soon – the first nest in Greece (in Zakynthos) has already been laid!

World Turtle Day (Or, Myrtle's decline into alcoholism)

Apparently it's World Turtle Day, we actually only found out, or remembered about it today. So in place of actual prepared celebrations, we had a good meal, followed by raki - the cheapo awful stuff you can buy for 2 Euros in an unmarked plastic bottle! Most of the volunteers haven't had this before – and they all hated it. However, Myrtle really let herself go and really enjoyed the celebrations, but I think had perhaps a little too much.

Today has been the best day so far, had a gyros after kiosk, the wind has dropped, and we could finally have a swim in the sea! We start doing slideshows on Monday, and hopefully start monitoring work in a week or so, I'm hoping I can do some here before I leave for my project. The first Chania volunteer starts tomorrow, but we still won't be starting until there are a couple more.

Ooh, Sunburn!

Last year I managed to go the whole 5 weeks without getting sunburnt, this year, I haven't even managed 24 hours. The culprit is the kiosk. I wasn't really expecting to be building it for 4 hours in the middle of the day, and I forgot to wear a hat, which means burnt scalp – brilliant!

I've been here a couple of days now, and I'm starting to get back into it. I have just done the first kiosk shift, which went well, we were “donated” a total of 68 Euros, not bad for the first kiosk shift of the year. There are only 9 of us at Rethymno so far, and only 2 English, the other, typically, is from Hull – can't get away from the place!

I have a meeting with the Crete co-ordinator later today to discuss what we are doing with Chania, I believe I'll be going over to start the project there on the 30^th of May, but nothing has been decided yet. In the meantime, I'm pretty happy being at Reth!

I'm Here, Well, Nearly...

I've just arrived at my hotel for tonight in Heraklion - Hotel Rea, it's nothing fantastic, just a simple cheap place to stay for the night. Complete with bed, showers (not all hot...), breakfast and the suprising bonus of free wifi - so I'm making use of it whilst I can!

I arrived in plenty of time for my flight from Leeds Bradford (Thanks Helen!), and after stumping up an extra 16 quid because my bag was overweight, I proceed through security, sure enough as soon as I walk through the gates all sorts of lights start flashing and sirens go off. After a thorough examiniation I convince security I'm not a terrorist and they let me through. Apparently the studs in my jeans set off the alarms.

By the time I get in to the lounge area, we're told our gate will be announced "shortly", only to be then told it's going to be delayed by an hour. Not a big issue, I grab a Pear Cider and a sandwich from the bar, and watch a couple of episodes of 2 and a half men on my laptop.

The fight goes pretty smoothly, until I reach baggage reclaim, and discover that somehow the great big converyor belt monster has eaten my sleeping bag, which was straped to my backpack - must have been quite delicate too, the straps are neatly folded back up. I hang around until verything has come out and check lost & found with no luck. Ah well - It could be worse, it could have been my tent!

So I'm gonna get my head down now, don't have much to do tomorrow except get over to Rethymno, and maybe replace my sleeping bag. I'm gonna dream about my first Mythos, and first Gyros of the trip!

14 Days and Counting

Right, so it's 2 weeks to go.

I've got the official invite, I've booked my flights, the leaving do is organised and I've bought a tent (it's just like Brian's 'Party Tent' from last year!)!

Now all I can do is count down the days - 14 to go, only 9 of them actually in work!

Can't wait :D

Ooh, so I'm off to Chania

I have finally had confirmation that I will be spending the summer in Crete. I was actually offered the field leader position in Messara Bay, but a lack of driving license put paid to that plan.

The alternative was that I do the field leader position in Chania, which I obviously accepted. Chania is situated at the west end of the north coast, about 2 hours away from Heraklion. The turtle beaches in Chania have suffered a lot recently, last year the project only monitored around 25 nests (there were 170+ in Rethymno!). Archelon have decided (due to the current economic climate) to scale back the project a little, and that only 1.5km of beach will be monitored this year.

So, all I have to do now is wait for the official invite, which could come through at any time. Then I can book flights and get things sorted with work. In the meantime, I can start organising a leaving party!