Last year I had one of the most exciting experiences of my life in Kefalonia, Greece, volunteering with a charity called Wildlife Sense. The charity work focuses on Loggerhead sea turtles, caretta caretta, encouraging volunteers to visit the island and work hands on during the nesting and hatching periods. I was really lucky to have accidently chosen the month where these two periods overlapped, meaning I had the opportunity to work with fully grown turtles and hatchlings.
I was a little nervous as this trip involved my first ever solo fight, but ready with the new confidence moving away from home had given me, I was even more excited! Fresh off the plane my first night in Lixouri I was introduced to YOLO Souvlaki, delicious and cheap it quickly became a favourite. The first two weeks flew by snorkelling, exploring caves, having water fights, jumping off cliffs in to the sea below; we spent all our free time exploring. This also included getting the ferry over to Argostoli and cycling out of the city to explore the caves. After stopping in little cafes for drinks and ice cream one hidden spot so pretty the whole group then revisited it the next day. At night we became regulars at iscream, a local ice-cream parlour, getting involved in the lively local culture.
Despite being incredible, the time spent investigating the island didn’t even come close to being as amazing as the work itself. The main shifts we did were morning shifts, which meant lots of early mornings. These involve searching for tracks and nests on the beach, which unfortunately for me was unsuccessful for six shifts! When my group finally did find a nest on Kounopetra, Vatsa beach two hours of digging to find nothing continued my frustrating streak of finding nothing. After abandoning the nest due to the intense heat a re-dig later in the day found the eggs. It is important the eggs are found so that the nest could be protected and set for relocation if there was a chance of the nest becoming flooded or covered in clay. The next day was my lucky day I finally found a nest and the eggs inside of it! This one needed relocating as it was too close to the sea so it was at a high risk of becoming flooded. The third nest was also challenging as a massive thunderstorm trapped us under the outdoor shelter of Fishbones restaurant on Megas Lakkas beach.
Although often frustrating morning surveys were also one of the most important shifts that volunteers do in Kefalonia. With the beaches being checked every day to locate nests before they are damaged or predated on, or hidden by people removing the tracks to the nests. With each turtle making three attempts in a night to try, and often laying three nests they are easily put off by light or loud noise. Tracking the attempts can help estimate how many turtles are breeding that year.
Another way of trying to predict this is with night surveys, arguably the most exiting shift of the first two weeks. The long nights could be painfully boring if you find nothing with silent walks up and down Megas Lakkas till five in the morning. I was lucky though! On my second survey I saw and restrained my first turtle, a new one we named Moana, and it left me grinning for the whole day. My luck then doubled when on my fourth survey I got my second spotting, another new turtle! This time we decided to maintain a Disney theme. After destroying a lilo further down the beach on her first emergence, Lilo (as in Lilo and Stitch) fitted perfectly.
The events of both morning surveys and night surveys often lead to one of the larger group shifts, relocation. I was involved with about half of those which occurred during my time in Kefalonia. Getting to handle eggs I primarily had the role of marking the top of the eggs to ensure that the remained the correct way up and in the correct order. The eggs themselves felt and looked just like table tennis balls stacked up in the sand. For each relocation we each predicted the number of eggs in each nest, on my third relocation I won, guessing 86 eggs 87 were found.
My accidental perfect timing when picking the dates to visit Kefalonia meant I also got to attend a harbour tagging even in Argostoli. This is the charities chance to perform health checks on the turtles. As fishermen in the harbour have produced a habit of feeding the turtles they come close to the boats making them easy to spot. Consequently however, this also means turtles get injured by boats much more frequently, or snagged my fishing hooks. These health checks give a great opportunity to see the turtle and examine them in the sunlight.
My days off were spent travelling further across the island. A trip to Sami and the Melissani caves. The caves were formed by a collapsed cave and are now 36m deep in some areas, they were beautiful. With a stop next in Sami, enjoying chocolate waffles we decided to stop at Agion Theodoron Lighthouse and watch the sunset. It was one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen, glowing orange across the entire sea, and Kefalonia has a lot of beautiful sunsets.
The second two weeks were slightly different from the first. With turtles emerging even less frequently at night than before and nest hatchings beginning, morning surveys became the best to be on. It was my last day when I finally saw two hatchlings during a morning survey, emerging from the nest and crawling to the sea themselves. One of these two became stuck in a footprint and struggled with the swim out to sea so I had to walk out with it until the water was at my waist and luckily it began to start swimming further on its own, a massive relief.
They however were not the first hatchlings I got to see. As some of the nest had quite big groups emerging on the first day sometimes sand can fall down and stop other hatchlings escaping. To ensure that those who hatch later can also get to sea, partial inventories take place. For this the nest is emptied, living hatchlings are lead to sea, unhatched eggs are reburied and unfortunately, dead hatchlings are removed. I had two roles in this. Firstly the data scribe, and secondly my most exciting role in this was ‘turtle carrier’ lifting the living hatchlings from the nest to the track. They were a surprisingly bright blue colour and had to be laid flat on to my and in order for them to believe they were still on the ground. If they started to think otherwise they would begin to swim and become confused when back on the sand. Our last turtle we named Marco which only seemed to move once someone had gone to fetch water, which was used to cool them down in case they got too hot in the sun. After several trips for water he finally made it to sea and we were done for the day.
Along with the shift based on the turtles we also had smaller shifts collecting data for research. These shifts were light pollution, as light can effect if turtles lay nests and effect hatchling orientation, and beach profile to evaluate the changing width of the beach and possible nesting areas. Nowhere near as exciting as the other shifts, they gave me many skills for data collection in the field, including precision and accuracy.
The trip was a once in a life time experience which I encourage anyone wanting to work with marine animals, or get involved in a conservation project to take part in. I learnt so much from talking to the people around the beaches, working directly on research and living in a different country for the first time. The experience got me involved in reporting through videos and writing articles greatly improving my confidence. Overall it was definitely one of the best experiences I have ever been involved in.
Want to learn more? Have a look at their website: https://wildlifesense.com/en/
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