Turtle Summer - Week 5

July 23, 2023 - July 29, 2023

Week five has begun, and it is starting to dawn on me that almost two months in Greece may sound like a long time but it’s over before you know it.

Fortunately, I still had three weeks of volunteering left and we were all desperately waiting for the first hatchlings. Almost every evening now, a team of a few people went to the beach to shade more and more nests. Still, in the mornings, new nests were still being found on morning survey. One morning survey, we found one pair of turtle tracks with heaps of BP’s (body pits - a little wiggle to test if the sand is good enough to lay her eggs) and AEC’s (abandoned egg chamber - after the wiggle she thought it was good enough to lay eggs, but decided to abandon the digging after a while).

Shading shift at sunset

This week another 10 days had passed, so this meant I got another day off! With my day-off pals, we went to the city of Chania. Not that Chania is particularly big, but compared to Mátala it’s huge. It is a nice city with a beautiful old town. We walked around for a bit before having lunch. After a delicious risotto, we wanted to see if the kiosk of the Chania location was opened, but sadly, it was not. A relaxed, but nice day off!

Ruins in Chania

When we got back, there was another turtle nesting on Mátala beach! She was massive! Unfortunately, the lights were super bright although she did lay her eggs in the end. Not only that but we got to see her dig the egg chamber really well. I had expected them to be very clumsy and awkward, they were not! I was surprised with how easy she moved on the land and how carefully she dug the egg chamber. A great experience, and of course a good moment for some public awareness!

Turtle nesting

Please don’t use flash! The brightness is due to the lights of the taverna. I did make the mistake of standing in its eye sight. Please don’t follow my example and stand behind its head. Eventually the taverna did turn down the lights and eggs were laid!

Sunrise during morning survey

This week we were finally rewarded with some hatchling tracks! At night the hatchlings dig their way to the surface and make their way to the sea. We were glad to see that all the tracks (yes, we always try to follow every single track to see where and how they’re going) went to the sea. It was such an exciting moment! The tracks are so little and it is nice to see why we do all of this. Little spoiler for the next post: we will be seeing live hatchlings too!

Hatching season has begun!