Excavation tonight at Alagadi.

Dear Turtle Followers

After a long silence on the blog long due a really hectic few days, Collsy has remembered to update the blog through me, Josh. We have a public excavation tonight! All you have to do is turn up at our base at The Goat Shed, in Alagadi, at 6.30pm or just before. It should take about an hour to an hour and half, everyone is welcome and we welcome cameras and camcorders but the flash must be turned off, so as to not damage the hatchlings sensitive vision.

Hopefully see you tonight
Josh x

Excavatıon on today at 18:30

Celebrate and lets excavate!

Hello turtle lovers!

Sorry about the slight delay in this latest blog entry, but we DO have an excavation this evening at 18.30. As usual meet at our base, the Goat Shed, in Alagadi village and we will all walk down to the excavation site together.

There will be lots to see tonight, as we have plenty of hatchlings to release from a couple of morning excavations and as well as some stragglers from the tail end of the night work we carry out.

Please bring water as it can be quite hot and the whole excavation can last for up to 1 hour 30 minutes. I would also like to remind people not to use flash photography as it will be the hatchings first time at seeing light, and we don’t want to damage the little beasties eyes!

Catch you later,

Samuel

Excavation tonight at Alagadi

Good morning turtle followers,

We do have a public excavation on this evening, so if you would like come a visit the poroject and watch the excavation, please meet at the Goat shed in Alagadi village and we will take you down to the nest.

Please may I remind you that we ask no flash photography as it can damage the hatchlings sight, as it is the first light they have seen

Thank you
Collsyxxx

Celebrate and lets excavate!

Good morning one and all,

I am glad to announce to all the world that we do have another excavation on this evening, and after all the loggerhead excavations, we have another green nest to excavate...how exciting!

If you would like to see a volunteer dig to the ends of the earth, (the green nest egg chambers can be up to a meter deep) then you are welcome to come and watch.

As always (you know the form by now) we get everyone to meet at the Goat shed for 6:30pm where volunteers will take you down to the nest after this time.

If you have been trying to call me ts morning, I apologise for not answering, I had the morning of for a chance of a lie in..bliss, but the lines are all up and running now if you would like to call - 05338678188

Hope to see many people there
Collsyxxx

Sorry Turtle Followers there is an excavation on!

Good morning turtle followers,

after a prompt update with the blog yesterday morning, I have let myself down today. We do however have an excavation on this evening, and I therefore invite everyone and anyone to come and join the volunteers in excavating the nest. The nest we are excavating today is a Green, and is our first Green pubic excavation so it is well worth a watch - although we can not guarantee there will be many hatchlings remaining in the nest as it has been hatching over the last 4 days, we do have hatchlings from Alagadi to release from this morning.

We do however ask that during the excavation , no flash photography, as not only does it show how dirty the volunteers really are, but it is also the first time these hatchlings have seen light, and the intensity could impair their sight.

We hope to see many of you there tonight, just as before, turn up at the Goat shed for 6:30pm and we will take you down to the nest from there.

Hope to see you there
Collsyxxx

Excavation for the Nation to Night!!!

Good morning turtle followers,
After a quick morning on the beach, I have managed to remember the blog, and have posted a nice early blog stating that yes we do have an excavation on this morning. The nest is on bay three, and is Loggerhead nest.

All those are welcome to come view the volunteers expert digging skills to hunt out the nest, and release any babies that are found that night.

We do ask though, no flash photography when the first hatchlings emerge, as the light is the first light the babies have seen, and it can damage their eyes. Sorry for the nag but it it is important. We will have volunteers walking around the nest with hatchlings for close up pictures.

We hope you can all make it, if not and you still wish to see an excavation, please call me on 05338678188 after 9:30, and i will be able to tell you whether there is going to be an excavation.

Hope to see you this evening
Collsyxxx

SORRY!!!- Excavtion this evening

Hello turtle followers,

I am sorry to say that writing the blog this morning completely slipped my mind, and I know I will be luck to catch those who want to come down to the excavation this evening, but we do have one on. If any followers are reading this and would like to come down this evening to observe the volunteers dig up the nests and see babies scurry to the sea, you are more than welcome to come down. Whereas those who are currently sat in England wishing they where here can only dream of the hatchlings scurrying to the sea (Sorry Mum-didn’t mean to rub it in :D)

Once again sorry for the delay in writing the blog, but please do come along if you can!

Collsyxxx

Excavation Tonight on Alagadi

Good morning turtle followers,

I am happy to announce that we do have an excavation on this evening, after a day of no excavations yesterday.

This nest is a black nest, so any hatchlings will be weighted measured and released on the day.

All are welcome to come and view the excavation, just meet at the Goat shed at 6:30pm where we will take everyone down to the nest.

Hope to see you there
Collsyxxx

EXCAVATION-Tonight at Alagadi

Good morning all,

A lack of power means a late blog entry, but I come online with good news, that there is going to be an excavation on this evening. The nest that we will be digging up , is a transplanted nest from the North coast, where if it was left, the eggs would have been washed over and the nest would most likely be destroyed. Therefore to increase the chance of the nest surviving, volunteers carefully dug up the nest, and relocated the eggs to a sit on Alagadi.

This nest has been hatching over the last couple of days, however, because this nest if from the north coast, we treat it within the same conditions; there are flat cages, and a dome cage over the nest for warning and to prevent predation, however unlike the nests on Alagadi, there is no ring cage to collect the hatchlings. This means that many have already made it to the sea, so any hatchlings found from this nest will be released straight away along with some babies that where excavated this morning.

Hope to see lot of you followers there
All the best
Collsyxxx

Logger Excavation tonight

Good morning once again fom Aligadi,

We do have another public excavation on this evening, and all who wish to come along can do. This nest is a Loggerhead nest, and it is one of the nests that we are taking genetic samples to see how many possible males there are in the Med. Therefore we will not be realesing any of the hatchlings out of the nest tonight, but we do have lots of babies that my team of Morning hatchers have just excavated this morning.

Therefore we hope many of you will turn up to view the excavation. Just meet at the Goat shed for 6:30pm where we can then take you down to the nest to start the excavation.

Hope to see you there,
Collsyxx

Excavation on Aligadi

good morning turtle followers, having just got off the beach i have some good news for those who have not yet been down to view an excavation, as we have one this afternoon. All are welcome to come along. Just meet at the Goat Shed at 6:30am, and we will take you down to the nest that we are going to excavate.

Hope to see you all there
Collsyxxx

Wind down

Things are really winding down now with the adults although last night we unexpectedly had a green nest taking the total on Alagadi to 181. If you check out www.seaturtle.org/tracking you'll see that all of the females that we are tracking have left and some of them have hit the coasts of Syria, Lebanon and Egypt already. Hatching however is picking up and we expect this to peak towards the end of this month.

We have been enjoying the cooler weather these last few days and with a later start on the beach at night time an extra hour in the day here and there goes a long way. Today Tom and I took a trip to the south side crossing the border at Lefkosia where we endulged in some western food and drank coffee on the top floor of Debenhams over the city. Our visa's were due to run out so this jolly was a strict necessity.

Eight of the volunteers have been invited to help out with the national celebrations at Erenkoy today. But despite the lack of manpower we are going ahead with an excavation this evening.

Hope to get into town soon to catch up with you Angela....Monday perhaps. And thanks to Pat and John for dropping off the cash that you raised on the stall.

Robin x

Excavation Tonight on Alagadi

Morning turtle followers,

Sorry I have not updated the blog earlier, we have had one of those mornings down the beach, where nests started hatching at 8:20am. Then we have to wait 30 min after the last hatching hatches before we can leave the nest..this morning the last one to hatch came up at 8:50 so busy busy morning.

So the news that you have been waiting for, we do have an excavation o this evening, and as this nest is a black nest, we will be releasing the babies found in the nest this evening, along with some of the greens that hatch on Alagadi this morning.

So all are welcome, just meet at the goat shed (base) at 6:30pm, where we will take you down to the nest. We do recommend that you bring some water down, as the nest can take up to an hour to excavate, and we don't want anyone becoming dehydrated!!!

Hope to see you all there
Collsyxx

Excavation....Celebration!!!

Good morning Turtle followers,

I have some good news, after a free day from excavations yesterday, we are pleased to announce that we are having an excavation on tonight. This nest is a Loggerhead, and was not original laid on this beach. It is a transplanted nest from one of the North coast beaches, as it was in danger of being washed away.

All are once again welcome, and we hope to see you there.

Collsyxx

the truth about turtle poo

This week has seen the loss of more of our long time volunteers. Sam, Kate and Alex left for England after a raucous night of singing, dancing and twister at the goatshed and Adrian (aka ze German) left for Germany this morning. We’re going to miss them loads so I have compiled a little list of Cyprus memories for them.

1) Kate pit tagging herself in the thumb
2) Sam wondering if you could become pregnant with turtle babies if you were in the wrong place and the wrong time
3) Adrian sleeping in the hammock
4) Alex attempting to play volleyball and leapfrog other volunteers in the pool#
5) Adrian sitting in the shower fully clothed bathing a cut foot and a cut chin
6) Sam and Kate failing to balance standing on an upside down kayak in a prohibited pool.
7) Alex drunkenly wondering bay 1 and 2
8) Sam’s many many food fights
9) Adrian’s roof time

So bye to all of you and we miss you loads.

So this week has been really busy. We still have adult turtles coming up to lay on Alagadi, which is very late in the season. Plus we’re really in the swing of the hatchling season now so we’re having public excavations on most days. If you would like to come and watch an excavation please phone 05338678188 after 9:30am and we will let you know if we have an excavation that afternoon.

Last Sunday we were invited to a pool party at Penny’s house, which was brilliant. The party entailed an entire day of fantastic food, quad bike racing, pool volleyball (with some dubious rules), a treasure hunt and everyone, with out exception, being thrown in pool fully clothed. It was a bedraggled but happy group of volunteers that trudged down to the beach for night work that evening.

A few of us managed to go on a small adventure the other night to go and see Harry Potter in Nicosia. After an extortionate taxi ride, during which we feared for our lives, we finally turned up 10 minutes late to sit in a cinema so long and narrow we could only just make out the screen from our seat. Even with that and the picture looking distinctly like a 70’s horror film in a strange mixture of sepia and flashing lights, we still managed to sleep through almost the entire film. (apart from Collsy, who obviously doesn’t work hard enough). Oh well, this is what nights off are all about.

Another dead turtle washed up on Lara beach this week. So obviously it was necessary to stink out the goatshed by doing an autopsy and using the excrement as a green fertilizer. Turtle poo usually consists of small green fragments of runny liquid. If you would like to observe some, please come to the goatshed, where a turtle has been previously squeezed and emptied on our garden. Please excuse the smell, it’s only partially the volunteers.


Well I better go as I can hear the entire goatshed clamouring for tea, which apparently they can’t make themselves.

Toodaloo. Celli

Another Excavation for the Nation to Night!!!

Good morning once again to all you turtle followers.

I am sorry this message is a bit late, us morning hatchers have only just got off the nest after a busy morning consisting of 4 excavations. So now down to the important news, I am glade to say that we have another excavation on today, and all are welcome to come and view.

This nest is a logger nest, and started hatching on the 1st of this month. We have already had 30 babies out of the nest, and a further 2 out of it this morning so hopefully there will still be some babies hatching in it for you all to view tonight.

I hope everyone hoping to come see an excavation can make it tonight (a 6:30pm meet at the Goat Shed), and those who are unable to make it can ring me in the mornings to see whether there is an excavation on that day, or keep an eye on the blog.

See you soon
Collsyxxx

My number is 05338678188

Excavation tonight!

Good morning once again to dedicated turtle followers,

We have got an excavation today, with a 6:30 meet at the Goat shed. This nest is a Logger again, and was laid on the 14th June.

This year has been a record year for the turtles especially in Aligadi. This year we have had 173 nests, and around 600 activities (attempts and U-turns). This hopefully means that we are starting to see a possible result of our work on this project, as the hatchling released in 1992 when the project started, are reaching maturity, and may have come to nest for the very first time this year.

So I hope you can all make to day’s excavation, remember if you cannot make it tonight, you can either call me on my mobile in the mornings, or keep a close watched eye on this blog.

Hope to see you then
Collsyxx