Update on Volunteering

Now on my tenth day of volunteering with the turtle project in Katelios, which means that I have five days left before I move to the other turtle project in Argostoli. I will be sorry to leave here, because I’m getting on very well with everyone, and I like the work, but I’m also looking forward to getting involved with the other volunteers over there, most of whom I’ve been in contact with a little bit, and they all seem like good fun as well. Plus I’ll get to live out of my tent for two weeks, and who wouldn’t be excited about that.

Just to give a little bit of an idea of the kind of work we’re doing I’ll outline a typical day in the Katelios project.

06:00: One pair of volunteers leave the accommodation (meeting the four volunteers from nightshift on their way down the hill to walk the length of the beach), looking for any signs of turtle activity that may have been missed during the night, as well as taking accurate details of the locations of any new nests so that they can monitored during hatching season.  They also keep an eye out for rubbish, which they collect and dispose of, and if there is anything out of the ordinary they’ll report on that too.  They also give information about the project and the turtles to any early birds they find on the beach at that time of the morning.

06:00: Another pair of volunteers get on bikes and cycle for about an hour (part of which is up a very long, steep hill) to get to one of the other nesting beaches.  They walk the length of that beach, then take kayaks to the next nesting beach about a kilometre away, and walk along there.  Once again they are looking for signs of turtle activity, and also taking note of anything significant or unusual, such as evidence of people having camped or driven on the beach during the night.  The reason that this is a problem is that noise and lights on the beach at night will deter turtles from nesting, and a vehicle that passes over a nest will pack the sand around the eggs, making it harder for hatchlings to dig their way out, and also removing the air from around the nest and possibly crushing the eggs.

09:00-13:30: One volunteer opens the Environmental Centre – a converted school building now used as an information centre for people who would like to learn more about wildlife on Kefalonia and more specifically about the loggerhead sea-turtles.   It’s often quite a quiet shift so it’s the perfect time for reading and writing postcards or blog entries.

17:00-20:00: The school is opened once again for the evening.

17:30:  Evening beach shift.  A pair of volunteers take to the main nesting beach again, this time to remove any obstacles that could put off the turtles as they make their way up the beach to nest, i.e. filling in holes that people have dug, knocking down sandcastles (you get some very impressive ones) and removing litter.  My favourite bit is probably the knockage of sandcastle-age, the last time I was here we found a sand CITY, with cobbled avenues and tree-lined streets and everything.  It took us about ten or fifteen minutes to knock the whole thing down, but part of the reason was because we were pretending to be Godzilla for a lot of it.

22:00: Night shift.  Four volunteers start in the middle of the main nesting beach, and one pair patrols the west end, the other the east in single file, about five metres apart.  The walk usually takes about 20-25 minutes, and then they rest until 23:00 when they walk back to the centre again.  This tooing and froing on the hour continues all through the night, until they find tracks, when the lead person will investigate to see if there is a second track (indicating that the turtle has been and gone).  If there is only one they then creep as carefully and as silently as possible along the track to see if a turtle is nesting, and observe it until it has reached the egg laying stage.  Once the turtle begins to lay it goes into a trance state and the second volunteer is given the signal to approach so they can begin collecting data (date; time; measurements of carapace; tag number - if tagged already, if not then the turtle’s flipper is tagged and the new tag number is recorded).  All activity around the turtle is carried out in darkness and with a red light when necessary, as they can’t see this very well.

The rest of the time we hang around the accommodation (possibly eating the apricots off the tree, or figs from the tree up the road) or snorkel or hitch into Skala, the nearest town for shopping.  In short, it's not a bad deal.

In other news have a few more turtle pictures to share.