Penny's cheesecake rocks our world!

So after a tough week with all the turtles in the Med seemingly visiting Alagadi on yesterday’s changeover we were rewarded with a pool party at Penny’s, everyone’s favourite event! Enough food to feed a small army was presented and as usual we tucked in with full force gorging until we could no longer move! Thank you so much Penny, I’m sure you know how much we love your food by now, such a good change from courgettes!

Penny treated the volunteers, all except me, who was stuck on tourist duty all alone in the Goatshed, to games! The turtle egg hunt was a great success and everyone was gloating with their prizes, Sam was especially proud of his wine, packet of milky ways and a packet of biscuits, which he kindly gave away to the Germans who failed….

Becca, Sam and myself were first on Iki so headed over very slowly as the size of our stomachs was preventing us from going any quicker. It started out as a quiet night and all was well with us walking slowly and quietly backwards and forwards trying to digest, when we were rudely interrupted by bright lights in Iki car park. We stumbled back to sleepy rock avoiding Turk holes on the way and sent Sam over the rocks to investigate. We had seen a torch heading out around the rocks so expected maybe a late night fisherman or two….unfortunately what Sam met was far, far worse! Becca and myself hung back in anticipation hoping not to see the three flashes warning of imminent death from Sam. After what felt like an eternity he returned triumphant from over the rocks with a half naked Turkish man and English women in tow they had clearly decided that the rocks were an appropriate place for those kinds of shenanigans! Becca tried to hold it together but laughed almost hysterically at the Turkish man with a rather round paunch and tight pants and shoes on! Fortunately we were quickly rid of them and back to turtle patrol.

Today has been a day of progress, cage making took the fore and we now have plenty on white domes to protect our nests. The Monday beach clean is currently in progress and hopefully the volunteers are not suffering too much!

That’s all for now, other than to say that the turtles are still coming ashore thick and fast and we are now up to 85 nests on Alagadi alone, there’s potential for this number to almost double as we are only roughly half way through nesting and our first hatchlings could potentially break through the sand a couple of weeks from now!

Emma xx

An update on the arrabada!

Numbers from last night's craziness just in - on Alagadi 1 alone there were 8 nests (3 loggers, 5 greens), 5 u-turns and 5 false attempts. On Alagadi 2 (iki) there was one nest, 5 u-turns and 2 attempts. Nice one to those on the beach (except the people who need to learn the 24 hour clock!) and to those who typed up the data for an hour today (after too many jamjar mojitos last night)! Seemingly all the turtles in the world were on Alagadi last night as the daywork ladies had only one u-turn and one attempt to contend with this morning. On the volunteer side we say goodbye to Celli for a week and hello to Michele, our resident german from last year, and Mehmet, our resident Turk also from last year. Hosgeldiniz guys. Turk, Turk, Turk it up! Tonight is our much loved boss man Mr Robbo Robbo's night off so it's left to the rest of us to man the beach and hope that nothing goes shockingly, horrifically wrong during this time. Not on my watch people.

Thanks to people at home for keeping us up to date with current affairs, the sad news about MJ came through last night and in tribute we will all be moonwalking the beach tonight and having a one minute radio silence in between turtles. Heee heee, shamone big man.

Becca x

Mini-arabada / Litter progress with Belediyisi

8 nests on Alagadi now taking us up to 73! This was the busiest night I have seen in 5 seasons of night work here. The team pulled together working hard through the night, communicating well so that nothing got missed and we were off the beach by 5.30. Very pleased. Though, our guests were bit of a dissapointment as the majority only stayed to see the two loggerheads that nested within the first hour of darkness. Even with 5 green turtles on the beach at the same time digging, they could not be tempted to stay to see one lay, they don't know what they missed! Very generous in leaving us donations though that will keep us in oats and a roof over our heads. Our faithful companions Penny and Sally stuck it out until dawn and at one point were even left with a clipboard to monitor a turtle. I stuggle to count the number of turtle encounters I had but at the end of the night at the midpoint we found the tell tail track of a logerhead that had emerged, headed directly towards the group unseen and u-turned back into the see. We concluded that Sally's snoring had put her off, although I don't think Sally had chance for any shut eye in all the commotion.

A huge thanks to Penny and Sally for your help, cake, and beach banter. Also to Alagadi residents Pat and John for your help in securing our turtle merchandise.

It looks like the belediyesi (council) have finally come round after all our best efforts and are emptying the bins from the beach car park, yay! Hopefully now we can focus our efforts more on the turtles and less on clearing the rubbish from the carpark.

More pics from Sabine!

Green on Alagadi 2 (iki) at dawn.

Jimbob's night wear.

Three Iki amigos: Gill, Boner, Jimbob.

West is best

First day out west, Sam and I were met by the smelliest dead cow which had somehow made its way onto the beach, causing the walk of West 2 to become somewhat of an obstacle course, avoiding breathing for a while and cautiously testing the air after passing. Sam and I had at least one nest for the first few days, with Ainslie’s walks being somewhat less successful she was starting to lose faith. However a hot morning on Monster lead to a tired and thirsty Sam and I waiting at the beach bar (on a beach there are rarely people?!?!) trying to amuse ourselves while waiting for ages while Ainslie measured up her many turtle activities on her own. This led to Sam and I sunbathing, exploring the beach bar, complaining about their poor tiling and using their showers to cool off. Several days our journey back home intercepted the Turkish army playing their war games, this consists of sitting in their many tanks behind small bushes. As none of us spoke particularly good Turkish, and weren’t sure how they would feel about our intrusion, we drove quietly trying not to do anything wrong. As Sam doesn’t actually let his camera leave his hand and photos of army personnel and land is forbidden, he obviously thought it would be a good idea to take photos.


A trip to the supermarket was filled with much hilarity as Sam found sweet corn with decidedly moustache-looking growths from the ends of them. Persuading Ainslie we needed some, the Chuckle Brothers later made an appearance in the Guzelyurt household.

Trying to fill our afternoons, and as the house was ridiculously hot, we decided to go off on a drive to see what we could find. We found a ‘Wooden faces of Cyprus’ exhibition, the army border to the South side and the most amazing views we were ‘forbidden’ to take photos of.

Turtle activity remained relatively busy, with several nests each day, ending in a disappointing find of two predated nests on Message. Large metal pegs are now being used to hold the wire cages down for forcefully than sticks, which will hopefully lessen the threat of predation by stray dogs.

Finding out my degree results, a celebration was planned, camping on the beach. Great, or so we thought. Dampness and a chilling wind meant our high spirits were flattened and a sleepless night followed.

After our morning on the beach on change over day, we ‘treated’ ourselves to a visit to St Hiliarion castle. Walking up the millions of stairs in the searing mid-day heat, oh what a treat. Amazing views and a good laugh at Sam taking so many photos of himself meant it was an end to a great week out West. West is Best.

Ella

Dead loggerhead

I awoke this lunch time to find a number of missed calls on my phone and a lot of banter in the goat shed about a dead turtle and the press. Apparently a deceased loggerhead had been found on Alagadi this morning and caused some commotion with the local press and the volunteers after their mornings work on the North Coast. The team had decided to bury the large adult female at the back of the beach. With no pressing engagements this afternoon we decided to unearth the girl to conduct an autopsy. We loaded her into the back of the truck and carried her highly pressurised carcass into the goat-shed garden. Obviously dead for some days, her bloated body was hissing with gasses of decomposition, particularly notable was a break in the carapace towards the tail where gasses and innards were oozing, possibly a hit from a jet ski, as we are seeing these increasingly at Alagadi. With the turtle on her back we removed the plastron (ventral shell) and volunteers gathered around, close to vomiting from the smell. We removed the lungs and analysed the gastro-intestinal tract. The turtle certainly did not starve as the stomach and intestine were full with over 2kg of decomposing food. We analysed this and found the majority of the diet to consist of sponge, with many shells from various species of crabs. We also found tell tail remnants of whelks, the operculum doors that close these shells off to predators, these were from large whelks the hard opercula around the size of a thumb nail but the rest of the shell digested. We found a small piece of polythene in the intestine; clear evidence that litter on the beaches and in the sea is affecting the turtles, though this was not the probable cause of death, more likely the rupture form an impact to the posterior of the carapace.



At weekends we see jet skis travelling at great speed up and down Alagadi where turtles are aggregating to breed. Although no tags were found on this adult female and she was not carrying eggs at the time of death, if she had survived to breed at Alagadi she would have been one of 16 loggerhead females recorded this season, so 6.25% of the 2009 Alagadi breeding population. We can not afford to loose breeding adults like this and more needs to be done to prevent jet skis and motor boats from illegally using waters off prime nesting beaches such as Alagadi. After all Alagadi is the 5th most important nesting beach for the green turtle in the Mediterranean and is a hugely important conservation area for both species. An exlusion zone around the designated "Specially Protected Area" has been ignored for some years now.

We are conducting beach cleans on Alagadi every Monday and locals have been getting involved. We also hand out bin bags out on Sundays and speak to local bathers, encouraging them to take their litter off the beach on departure. If people would like to help us on Monday beach cleans we meet at the goat shed at 5pm.

Robin,

Chief Officer Kaplumbaga

Ana, Jimbob and Libby’s Cyprus extravaganza!

After much persuasion, a night on the beach and conversations like this:
Robin -IF you go
Ana- we ARE going
Robin- but IF you go you will only see a goat. And it’s boring.



We finally set off on our little trip round Cyprus
Keco, our amazing and friendly neighbour arrived at the goat shed early and gave us a lift to Girne. (awwwwww) After arriving in Girne we took a very breezy Dolmus (bus) to Nicosia. Lovely views of the Venetian Walls, the ancient Sofia Cathedral and the courtyard of the old Inn. Briefly lost in a seemingly endless succession of carpenter stalls and staring men. Much ice-cream enjoyed. We crossed the border into the Greek side of Cyprus. Poor Ana “suffered much” with her Capeverdean passport as the security officers struggled yet again to discover whether this country actually exists. We immediately went to the top of Debenhams. This sounds an odd thing to do, but it was advised to us that the top floor had amazing views of both sides of the border, and there indeed was! Only tourist destination seemed to be the motorcycle museum though. We passed.
Following this was an epic, roasting walk in the sun to a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. Only to find that the very unhelpful tourist information lady had directed us to an obscure suburb of Nicosia. Thirsty, desperate and slightly crazed by the sun, a local woman rescued us when we asked for directions saying simply “get in the car” and then proceeded to drive us to the bus stop for Famagusta!! To use Jimbob’s words, the bus was “ all kinds of sweaty” and took a good hour. When we finally reached the city there were absolutely no signs to the centre of town, but by some incredible fluke, we managed to walk there by accident. On arrival we drank about a gallon of water and orange juice sold to us by a man who insisted “ go left, Nicosia, left at roundabout. Nicosia. Left”… and so on. There we saw many Ancient ruins and another mosque where we unluckily ran into the ticket man on the way out. We spent about 10 minutes laughing at the green peace cyclist dude (who’d cycled all the way through Africa, and was going on to Iran) who was struggling to understand why the same ticket man kept saying “one person two tickets”. We bought a Fez as a peace offering for Robin, and in the faint hope that he would give us the night off, after our pathetic 3 hours sleep the night before. This failed.
Night on the beach was a struggle. There were a couple of nests, but we found it difficult to keep our eyes open. However, as Ana says “After Happiness death is nothing!!”