Life after ARCHELON...

As soon as I got home on the 5th I cried, I couldn't believe I wasn't at camp anymore. I had serious withdrawal from camp for the first week of being home before I readjusted to not being there. It was lovely to have my usual cup of tea, to see my pets, friends and family but at the very same time I left a life behind at camp. 

 Sammy and Anna had given me the cutest leaving present, when they gave it to me I cried it was so sweet of them. It was a mug with a selfie of us pulling silly faces with the caption "Take me seriously" which was an inside joke at camp that I will always love. So as soon as I had a cup of tea the next morning I sent them a picture of it in my new favourite mug!

 Since coming home I've still kept in contact with quite a few people who I met at camp. And I hope to arrange plans to see who I can soon, I am sure the friendships I made there will last for a long time. Volunteering at ARCHELON was by far the best experience of my life, and I'll forever treasure those 10 weeks. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by the most incredible people and share so many experiences with them. 

 I had 3 group photos while at camp, these don't show everyone I met there but here's some of them!

Left to right: Anna, Emily, Tania, Will, Me, Emily, Donna, Sarah, Alexus, Ruben, Rocky, Hetty, Lizzie, Sammy

Left to right: Tash, Klara, Donna, Ruben, Me, Gretta, Alexus, Rocky, Lizzie, Victor, Anna, Finn, AJ, Maria, Diana
Front row: Sammy, Iuliana, André

Left to right: Andrea, Glen, Gail, Tara, Ollie, Kieran, Kat, Iona

Front row: Anna, Sammy, Me

 If you're interested in volunteering with ARCHELON I highly recommend you do it! Go to archelon.gr for more information, or read about volunteering in the Lakonikos Bay project through GVI at www.gvi.co.uk/programs/volunteer-turtles-greece

 Also check out the Facebook pages for both ARCHELON here and the ARCHELON Lakonikos Bay page here!

To finish this blog of my experience, I want to say a huge thank you to the following people: 

Anna, Sammy, Alexus, Rocky, Donna, Emily R-B, Hetty, Will L, Lizzie, Ruben, Tania, Emily W, Sarah, Gretta, Iuliana, Diana, Victor, Tash, Klara, AJ, Farah, Jill, Will H, Finn, Marion, Jo, Charlie, Alex, Iona, Rosie, Kieran, Alana, Tara, Ollie, Kat, Gail, Glen, Viktoria, and all the family and part time volunteers, as well as the scout groups I met. You all made my experience as great as it was, you taught me so much and it was amazing to meet such great people from all over the world. I'm so happy I met each and every one of you.

Week 10 Volunteering @ ARCHELON 30/08-05/09

 Week 10!! My last week... Started off with my last shift with Anna ever, which I didn't realise at the time...

 Me and Anna had an excavation to do of V005 and there was a hatchling inside!! It was so sandy and adorable. It was right at the bottom of the egg chamber! The little hatchling stretched its flippers as it came out and was climbing all over the egg shells of its siblings before making its way to sea. It was BY FAR the cutest hatchling I ever saw!

 On the 1st August I had my only ever public excavation where I didn't have Anna and Sammy around! So I was doing the talking to the public, which before this experience I would've struggled with. I don't know whether it was because I felt I knew what I was talking about or whether it was that I really have developed my confidence but it was a breeze.

 On the 3rd August it was just one of the most perfect days. My last time on Vathi with Sammy for morning survey, only time I ever went there that early in the morning in fact! Usually when I'd go to Vathi it'd be if Sammy asked if anyone wanted to come along or she'd ask me if I'd come along because she needed help. I think that was my favourite thing to do really, just go on shift with the best person I met while I was out there, just chat, do the survey and have fun. I went on surveys to Vathi way more times when I wasn't actually down for a shift on Vathi than when I was actually put on to do it haha!

Morning sunrise on Vathi

 Earlier in the week Sammy, Anna and me spoke about how I'd never visited a different beach while there, so Sammy arranged a day trip to Skoutari, a beach we don't survey - it was gorgeous! We had lunch and so much fun. My favourite beach day by a long way!

Panoramic of Skoutari!

Me, Sammy, Kat and Kieran!

Mad-rote was my nickname from Sammy, and Sam.I.Is was hers; our rapper names she came up with!

 Finished off the day with the excavation of my first nest, S011. I saw this nest come full circle. My first nest; I saw the top egg, protected it, I shaded it, and then I got to excavate it with Sammy who was the one who was there for my first nest too. Sadly Rocky had been gone for a while since but she was there for my first nest too. Was nice closure to the volunteering experience.

Before we had dug for the eggs

Top egg in the egg chamber!

  

Me shading S011 on the 18th August!

Top hatched egg!

 

 My last morning survey was eventful, we had a found by predation nest at the end of East, similar to a found by hatching nest I mentioned earlier but it was dogs/foxes which found the nest before we saw hatchling tracks. So had to walk back to camp and get more bamboo to ensure secure nest protection. This meant that technically I had protected a nest/found a nest on every beach we monitored, which I didn't think was going to happen as hadn't found a nest on Mavrovouni at all during nesting season.

  

 For Taverna night we went to this place by the Port which did amazing Moussaka - one of my favourite meals now. My last day was pretty hard, I was dreading saying my goodbyes. I had seen so many goodbyes while I was there, but I didn't ever want it to be my turn to have to leave. We woke up, took a group photo, and then as my taxi arrived it was my time to say my goodbyes. I was sad saying goodbye to everyone but it's when it got to Anna I started to cry my eyes out, and I actually didn't manage to say anything when I was hugging her goodbye... And then as I stopped hugging Anna I looked over at Sammy, another one I knew I would never want to say goodbye to. It's hard when you spend 70 days with people, living and working together and you get so close. They truly felt like family by that point, and honestly the hardest goodbye I've ever had to say to someone. In the taxi I was just crying, the Friday before it didn't feel like I was leaving. Even the morning of me going it didn't feel like it. I said to Iona it feels like I'm just getting ready for Morning survey, and she said that's what it felt like too. It was saying goodbye to Anna and Sammy that it was at that moment it did feel like I was leaving.

 After all the crying me and Ollie made our long way back to Athens, on our 4 and a half hour bus back from Gythio. We decided to stop off at the Sea Turtle Rescue Center in Athens while we were there, which I was so excited for. I was so excited to see the turtles which were rescued by us safe and well in the center! Seeing Kyma again was great! I didn't see Sunny but one of the volunteers at the Center told me she was doing well, so I was super happy to hear that. 

Left: Kyma being rescued / Right: Kyma safe and doing good in the rescue center!

Summary:
30/08- MS V+S (EX V005) / K 12:00-14:00
31/08- MS S / EX KP
01/09- K 10:00-12:00 / ES S + EX S010
02/09- ES S
03/09- MS B / Skoutari / EX S011
04/09- MS ME / BC
05/09- left camp 

Key:
MS- Morning Survey
ES- Evening Survey
LS- Light Survey
NP- Night Patrol
K- Kiosk
BC- Basecamp
IT- Information Table
SS- Slideshow
EX - Excavation
SH- Shading 

Beach Codes:

M- Mavrovouni (Whole beach)

ME- Mavrovouni East

MW- Mavrovouni West
V- Valtaki

S- Selinitsa
B- Vathi

Week 9 Volunteering @ ARCHELON 23/08-29/08

  Week 9 well I had morning survey on Mavrovouni every single day, and most days also a kiosk shift of 14:00-16:00. It became my regular routine that week. On the Monday though I had my first public excavation, so I was the one sorting the eggs into the categories (hatched/unhatched/pipped) and scribing whilst Sammy did the removing of the egg shells and explaining what we did to the public. Public excavations generated a lot of interest in ARCHELON and was a great way of promoting awareness. The public would always really hope of seeing a live hatchling inside, which didn't happen on this occasion. 

    

 After this Sammy took me to the end of West where she trained me to do an excavation myself, so I was the one removing the shells, opening the unhatched eggs and identifying the stage of development or type of bacteria whilst she scribed. After i did it Sammy asked me if I wanted to keep one of the nest stones, as a souvenir, and I did and have it in my university room at this moment!

 Each nest would be given also 3 nest stones in a different corner of the nest, it'd have the same information as written on the nest stick but were in place in case the nest stick was removed or if the sunlight faded away the markers writing on the stick.

 On the 26th I got to finally have a kiosk shift with Sammy! Each time Sammy had a kiosk shift I would hang around and visit or even stay for the whole shift. I enjoyed her company and she didn't mind me being there so I'd make her kiosk shift more bearable.. And hopefully more fun. But this time we got to do it together, it was our only one together and we made the most of it by taking some great selfies - naturally with any great shift a selfie was taken.

 The following day me, Kat, Sammy, Glen and Gail took a trip to Sparti to visit the archaeological site of Mystras! 

 Oh and in the morning during an excavation that day Sammy found a double-headed embryo and brought it back to camp to show everyone... but it was a great morning survey for me and Kieran too because on the beginning of the survey we found 3 hatchlings out of one of the nests on West! One was on their back, and the others making their slow way to sea. We decided to rebury them as they were too weak to go on, but on the way back from our survey we had a check of the nest and one of the hatchlings was trying again to get to sea, so we watched it and shaded it from the sun as we watched it get to sea! Was such a great morning.

The double-headed embryo 

courtesy of Sammy

 On the Saturday I had my first public excavation where I was the one doing the digging, I didn't have to explain anything as Anna was there handling the public awareness side. But I was almost ready to do one without Sammy or Anna by my side to explain to the public!

Summary:
23/08- MS M / Public EX MW004 / EX MW003
24/08-  MS ME / K 14:00-16:00
25/08- MS ME / K 14:00-16:00
26/08- MS MW / K 14:00-16:00 / EX Dias
27/08- MS MW / K 14:00-16:00
28/08- MS ME / Trip to Sparti
29/08- MS ME / K 12:00-14:00 / EX MB / SS MB

Key:
MS- Morning Survey
ES- Evening Survey
LS- Light Survey
NP- Night Patrol
K- Kiosk
BC- Basecamp
IT- Information Table
SS- Slideshow
EX - Excavation
SH- Shading 

Beach Codes:

M- Mavrovouni (Whole beach)

ME- Mavrovouni East

MW- Mavrovouni West
V- Valtaki

S- Selinitsa
B- Vathi

Week 8 Volunteering @ ARCHELON 16/08-22/08

 Week 8 began with shading 3 nests of Mavrovouni West. Shading was where we would place up beach mats behind and alongside the nest prior to the nests estimated hatch date. This was to protect and 'shade' the nest from the artificial lights at the back of the beach, to prevent disorientating hatchlings. This was our way of giving them the best chance of making it to sea without getting lost. 

A shaded nest!

 The next day I went along and helped Sammy shade a found by hatching nest on Vathi in the evening. A 'found by hatching' nest is where a turtle either laid a nest before started monitoring the beaches (before the project started) and then it hatched and we located a nest. Or possibly a turtles nesting attempt was misidentified, and it was in fact a nest. Locals reported to Sammy hatchlings came out of a general area, but it was such a huge space that they claimed and there was no clear area the hatchlings may have come from (no clear singular crater in sand). Therefore we shaded a huge space while Finn and Rosie did the survey on the rest of Vathi. 

 On the 19th I had my first excavation! Excavations were where 10 days after the first hatch event of a nest we dig the nest up and open the egg chamber and see what happened to each egg and why. It's a way of determining the egg success rate for the nest. I was the one scribing, which means I was writing down all the information about the nest.

Sammy teaching me how to scribe

  Scribing things such as the clutch size (how many eggs were in the nest), how many hatched or didn't and why not e.g. Bacteria, or what stage of development the embryo made it to. After the survey and excavation me Sammy and Anna had some real great selfies with the shipwreck on Valtaki!

 And on the Saturday, Lizzie my great friend left... She had been there for the 8 weeks with me. She had arrived the same day as me and we went through it all together. And it was weird after she left, knowing only Sammy and Anna were there for some of the stories and things I'd refer to. Saying that though, I have new stories with those newer people which the people who left don't know of. It's hard when people leave though, regardless of how great new people are. But before she left on the Friday me, Lizzie, Sammy and Anna had a lovely pizza lunch at Castello Antico - a local hotel.

Sammy, Lizzie and Me on Lizzies last Taverna night

Summary:
16/08- ?
17/08-  MS S / Me, Lizzie, Anna and Sammy visited Lidl! / Shading MW009/10/11 19:00
18/08- MS S / K 14:00-16:00 / Shading B
19/08- MS MW / ES V + EX
20/08- K 10:00-12:00 / cook
21/08- MS MW / K 14:00-16:00
22/08- MS ME

Key:
MS- Morning Survey
ES- Evening Survey
LS- Light Survey
NP- Night Patrol
K- Kiosk
BC- Basecamp
IT- Information Table
SS- Slideshow
EX - Excavation
SH- Shading 

Beach Codes:

M- Mavrovouni (Whole beach)

ME- Mavrovouni East

MW- Mavrovouni West
V- Valtaki

S- Selinitsa
B- Vathi

Week 7 Volunteering @ ARCHELON 09/08-15/08

 The 9th August was one of the longest days for me at camp. It all started with me doing the survey on the whole of Mavrovouni, which is usually fine I didn't expect anything apart from maybe some hatchling tracks - as I mentioned in a previous week I never ever had any attempts on Mavrovouni so just came accustomed to nothing - especially since we had entered hatchling season and I thought nesting season was near enough over I did not expect what I found at the beginning of east. There I was, with 2 new volunteers on their first morning survey and we find adult turtle tracks, I was excited as hadn't seen them in a while and I was so glad for Kieran and Tara as they were able to see them and they were becoming less and less common at this time in the season. 

 We got to the first attempt and as I was identifying it I checked in the centre of it for if it was an abandoned egg chamber, which is initially what I thought it was, but it didn't feel like it so I looked at it and thought this might be a nest. So I talked the volunteers through the nest digging procedures, and then we started digging. We dug for an hour or so before I called Anna to come down and help us dig for the eggs as I was having trouble finding the egg chamber. I had taken a picture of the attempt before digging so it could be identified in case it wasn't a nest. But Anna was also unsure at the time so we continued to dig - it got to a stage where we identified it wasn't in fact a nest. 

 But then Anna told me about all the other nesting attempts I hadn't even seen (because I was focused on the attempt I as working on) but there were 5 other nesting attempts, just after the one we were at, by 2 different emergences and tracks going everywhere. Anna helped me identify them and write the information in the morning survey book before I carried on with the rest of the survey. The turtle ended up doing 3 emergences (so coming out of the sea 3 times) and made 5 abandoned egg chambers and 1 body pit. In general it could take you maybe 2 hours to do the survey, half hour to walk the road and beach one side and then do the other side taking roughly the same amount of time. But in total the survey took 6 hours! Starting at 5:30am and finishing near enough 12pm.

Turtle tracks and attempts gone wild at beginning of east

 As I was walking into camp after my survey Sammy comes running up to me and hugs me saying she as so sorry for the morning, of course she didn't know I'd be out for so long - that just was the way with surveys! which made them exciting honestly. Sammy was in charge of putting people on surveys and organising the shifts to do with the monitoring - so she felt bad haha!

 But as soon as I arrived at camp they were saying there was a turtle stranding far away from camp, and we'd have to drive for a while to reach it. They asked if I wanted to come and I said of course, I had just been up for 6 hours because I couldn't identify an abandoned egg chamber as one (which would've saved me a lot of time!) but I wanted to come along. So me, Sammy, Anna, Lizzie and Donal all went on the road trip to Archangelos to get the turtle. After much driving and a little getting lost, we finally got there. Sunny (Lizzie named the turtle) had a bad injury to her carapace, which meant lifting her up into the stranding box was more difficult as couldn't hold her in the usual places. Also Sammy didn't want to take measurements on her because of her bad injuries, Sunny also was missing a front flipper... We then drove to Skala where Donal was going to get his bus back to the airport, on the way Sunny ate the bamboo of the stranding box!! Finally after getting back to camp and then saying goodbye to Donal and sending off Sunny to the bus to the rescue center in Athens, I had been out for another 6 hours. So 2x 6 hour outings really took it out of me that day!

Beautiful Sunny

 The next morning survey I had on the 11th was eventful but in not such a great way.. I was on Selinitsa and this stray dog was following me and Rosie - which was fine. Until we got to a nest which has hatched and I was explaining to Rosie how we count the number of tracks and determine what happened to each hatchling eg. Dog/seagull or if it made it to sea. The dog was sitting right through the tracks. The dog then had something in its mouth, Rosie joked "haha what if it's a hatchling" and I laughed. And then I did a double take and looked closer and I saw a flipper, it WAS a hatchling!! The dog gave it to me straight away, and sadly the hatchling was already dead. It was hard to determine where this hatchling had come from, so we presumed it was the nest we were at but that did show how dogs are an issue to sea turtle conservation on those beaches!

A little further down unfortunately dogs had dug up 2 reburied hatchlings. We would rebury hatchlings if they were too weak to make it all the way to sea, to give them a second chance. And after this event we placed grids over the reburys, as no grid was in place here just a bamboo stick to indicate to us they were there in case hatchling tracks were able to be seen therefore dogs easily got to the hatchlings... 

Dug up rebury :(

Dead reburied hatchling...

 I also had my first and only ever light survey this week with Sammy. A light survey is simply here you'd walk the beach, just like a night patrol (in fact we did one at the same time) and each light you'd come across take a GPS measurement, note down type of light according to a list of diagrams and names, and the intensity.

Summary:
09/08- MS M / *turtle stranding 12:00 Archangelos (Sunny)*
10/08- MS ME / K 12:00-14:00
11/08- MS S / NP ME
12/08- Day off
13/08- MS S / NP MW
14/08- K 16:00-18:00 / NP ME
15/08- K 12:00-14:00 / NP + LS MW

Key:
MS- Morning Survey
ES- Evening Survey
LS- Light Survey
NP- Night Patrol
K- Kiosk
BC- Basecamp
IT- Information Table
SS- Slideshow
EX - Excavation
SH- Shading 

Beach Codes:

M- Mavrovouni (Whole beach)

ME- Mavrovouni East

MW- Mavrovouni West
V- Valtaki

S- Selinitsa
B- Vathi