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