Week 2 Volunteering @ ARCHELON 05/07-11/07

 My second week volunteering started off with seeing a dead Caretta caretta stranded on Mavrovouni West. I was able to learn what ARCHELON do when this happens. My leaders Anna (Public Awareness Leader) and Sammy (Monitoring Leader) went along to it and they had the job in determining the cause of death (if possible) and take measurements of the turtle before the coast guard/port police took over. 

  The rest of my week just consisted of more morning surveys, and a kiosk shift. Every Friday night we went out for cocktails and a dinner, called Taverna Night. This was one of the rare occasions on camp when everyone was clean, and wore clean(ish) clothes.

 

From left to right: Anna, Alexus, Emily, Lizzie, Donna, Hetty, Maddie (me). 

Back row from left to right: Sarah, Sammy, Ruben, Will, Rocky

 Every 2-weeks on the Saturday volunteers would leave and new volunteers would arrive. So that Friday we had a Toga party as a farewell party for the volunteers who were leaving us. We had so much fun!

From left to right: Hetty, Me, Rocky, Emily, Donna, Sammy

 From left to right: Hetty, Me, Donna, Emily, Rocky, SammyFront row: Will

From left to right: Donna, Lizzie, Alexus, Emily, Sarah, Hetty, Rocky

Front row from left to right: Maddie (me), Ruben, Sammy

Playing Flunky Ball, a great drinking game!

Guess which team won...

 On the Saturday morning I had morning survey on Valtaki and Selinitsa. That morning a nest had been predated in the night before we got to the nest to be able to protect it. As a predated nest we had to count each egg shell that had been predated and remove them far from the nest in order to not attract more dogs or foxes to the same location again. It's a sad sight to see...

The predated nest..

The predated shells

  On the same Saturday in the night, starting at 23:00 I had my first night patrol on Mavrovouni East. At this time this consisted of us walking the shore for the length of the beach looking out for people on the beach being disruptive. They could be disruptive in various ways, including having bright white lights on at the beach. Turtles are phototactic, meaning they follow the brightest light, which could be the white light that the person is using. Our job then is to go up to the person and inform them of this issue and kindly ask them to turn their light off, or switch it to a red light (as turtles see red less well than any other light colour on the spectrum). We also look out for bonfires on the beach, as they are illegal between May and October, and we could use this as a reason for them to put it out as for the turtles bonfires are again another source of bright light, as well as this would damage their flippers if they were to 'walk' over a hot bonfire or remains of such. During this time it was still nesting season for the turtles so keeping an eye out for any mother turtles on the beach was another part of our duty. Night patrol shift length varied depending on how busy the beach was, could've carried on as late as 2am. As with everything we did we recorded down all the events of the patrol in a separate book.

Summary:
05/07- K ??:??-??:?? Lost the times.
06/07- MS V+S
07/07- MS M
08/07- Day off
09/07- MS M / cook
10/07- K 13:00-15:00
11/07- MS V+S / NP 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