Kefalonia Turtle Wrestling Federation
Friday, June 18, 2010
Since the discovery of the first two nesting turtles on the night of the 3rd we've had a dearth of turtle activity on Mounda beach. Night after night patrols have trudged in around dawn with nothing report. That is until the morning of our lie in on the 16th the Manu came knocking in the early hours. As we had already encountered several tracks, we were exempted from a trip down the beach. The new volunteers who arrived late the night before were roused and sent down to the sand for a bleary-eyed crash course in Loggerhead turtles and their nesting behavior. It was a good thing as Jon and Vanessa would be on night watch that night. The patrols had each encountered a turtle nesting on the beach. Neither was one of the two turtles from two weeks before and one wasn't tagged at all.
Early in the morning of the 17th, during a rest break at the very end of the beach called Mounda point, Ueli and Vanessa watched a turtle pull itself out of the water, crawl across a bed of sea grass to the sand and nest.
Jean and I had night patrol on the night of the 17th/morning of the 18th. We were each paired with a new volunteer, Jon and Vanessa respectively. It was a balmy night with only the whisper of a breeze. We set our bags full of bedding, snacks and water down in the usual spot in front of the hotel and set to work flipping sunbeds (chaise lounge chair).
After lights and noise, the sunbed and accompanying umbrellas are probably the biggest detriment to a sea turtle nesting. Strewn out across the shore they create a veritable turtle obstacle course for a female trying to get to the back to nest. The sunbeds on Mounda beach are owned by a few assorted tavernas and the hotel. By law they're required to removed them every night but Greek laws are generally viewed more as guidelines. As moving seventy or so sunbeds and half that many umbrellas would be a lot of work the laws are not enforced they are thus ignored. We try to get the sunbed owners to at least stack the sunbeds behind the umbrellas instead of leaving them splayed across the beach.
With the increased night activity we've started stacking them ourselves on the first walk of the night and then unstacking them on our last walk. Vanessa and I moved quietly down the Kaminia section of Mounda beach scanning the wet sand for tracks and systematically flipping over sunbeds and pushing them together.
My shirt was damp by the time we reached the end of Kaminia. I sat cross-legged on a squishy mat of sea grass, pulled out my MP3 player and listened to a podcast of This American Life until my watch tolled 11 o'clock. I quietly roused Vanessa and headed down the beach. A quarter moon hung in the sky at our backs providing much appreciated illumination. There had been no moon for the week previous.
The waves rolled in gently. I strolled glad that we there was no sunbed flipping to do on this pass. 11 minutes into our walk I caught the familiar tracks glistening in the wet sand. They disappeared behind a turned up sunbed. I signaled for Vanessa to stop. My eyes swept up the beach catching the tracks skirting another turned up sunbed. A dark oblong moved in slow jerky movements towards the top of the beach. I dropped to my to my stomach and crawled up using the sunbeds as cover.
Coming up even with the second sunbed I paused. I could her clearly now. She flung sand around with all her flippers clearing a body pit. A car passed by on the road above, it's headlights illuminated her for a second. Perhaps startled the female abandoned the pit and lurched farther up the beach. I lost sight of her behind a low rise. I heard her begin digging again at the vegetation line. Plumes of sand shot up sporadically over the rise.
I waited for ten minutes or so. I couldn't hear her and the kicking up the sand had stopped. She was moving into her egg laying phase. I decided to give it a few minutes to make sure. Suddenly, in my periphery I caught movement. The dark oblong shape was laboring back down the beach.
Uh oh. She had evidently not liked her second nesting site either and decided to head back to sea. We'd have to stop her. Stop her momentarily at least. I yanked my head torch out of my pocket, signaled for Vanessa to come up and secured the elastic strap of the torch around my head. Standing up, I walked quickly toward. She was big. Her powerful flippers propelled her across the sand. I stepped behind her and grabbed her shell on either side of her head on what we would equate with her shoulders.
She surged forward nearly bringing me down on top of her. I fell to my knees and dug into the stand stopping her advance. She hissed shaking her massive head back and forth. It was all I could do to hold to her. This one had evidently not laid eggs as the process tires them out. She pushed forward and I dug in deeper.
Vanessa came up wearing her red head torch. “What do I do?” she said.
“Take the the bag,” I said through gritted teeth. I had a messenger bag with all the night patrol slung around my shoulder. I loosed a hand so she could get it off of me and quickly regained my grasp on the writhing turtle. “Get the water out. We have to see if she's tagged.”
Vanessa dropped to her knees and began trying the wash off the flippers checking for tags. The female wasn't happy about that. She began to spin me around in place making a low hissing the whole time. The scientific name for this sea turtle is the Caretta Caretta but the the common name for them is the Loggerhead so called because of their disproportionately large heads holding a large beak and powerful jaws. They use these jaws to crush snails, clams and other shellfish. Manu has assured us that they're not aggressive creatures but as I hung on to that one hundred and eighty pound hissing beast as it spun me around I was sure it wanted a piece of us.
Vanessa scampered ahead of the jaws washing off flippers and checking for tags. “I don't think she has one.”
“Okay,” I breathed. “Get the pliers and a tag out.”
The female had stopped whirling for a moment and tried to push off of my legs toward the sea. “What's the number?”
“K 223. Pointy side down?”
“Yeah. Wash the flipper off again. You'll have to hold it.”
The turtle hissed and began trying to turn again. I leaned against the turn and managed to hold her relatively still.
“Right here?”
I looked down. Vanessa held the pliers readied around the green webbing between two long “finger” bones of the flipper. “Yeah,” I said. “Don't hesitate.”
Vanessa clamped down with both hands. Pulling the pliers away the tag appeared firmly attached. “Check under the flipper to see if it went through.” It did. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Get the notebook out with the data sheet.” I talked Vanessa through taking the measurements of the carapace and did my best to get out of her way whilst holding on to the squirming turtle. Turtle Twister meets Turtle wrestling. The female took me on several more loops around as we recorded data concerning her shell condition and barnacles.
“I think that's everything,” Vanessa said
I took a look at the sheet to confirm. It had only been ten minutes but my shoulders and back were already aching. When the female took another lunge toward the sea I let her go. I said back in the sand and took a deep breath. The female padded quickly down the beach and disappeared into sea. Hopefully she's not to traumatized.
Since the discovery of the first two nesting turtles on the night of the 3rd we've had a dearth of turtle activity on Mounda beach. Night after night patrols have trudged in around dawn with nothing report. That is until the morning of our lie in on the 16th the Manu came knocking in the early hours. As we had already encountered several tracks, we were exempted from a trip down the beach. The new volunteers who arrived late the night before were roused and sent down to the sand for a bleary-eyed crash course in Loggerhead turtles and their nesting behavior. It was a good thing as Jon and Vanessa would be on night watch that night. The patrols had each encountered a turtle nesting on the beach. Neither was one of the two turtles from two weeks before and one wasn't tagged at all.
Early in the morning of the 17th, during a rest break at the very end of the beach called Mounda point, Ueli and Vanessa watched a turtle pull itself out of the water, crawl across a bed of sea grass to the sand and nest.
Jean and I had night patrol on the night of the 17th/morning of the 18th. We were each paired with a new volunteer, Jon and Vanessa respectively. It was a balmy night with only the whisper of a breeze. We set our bags full of bedding, snacks and water down in the usual spot in front of the hotel and set to work flipping sunbeds (chaise lounge chair).
After lights and noise, the sunbed and accompanying umbrellas are probably the biggest detriment to a sea turtle nesting. Strewn out across the shore they create a veritable turtle obstacle course for a female trying to get to the back to nest. The sunbeds on Mounda beach are owned by a few assorted tavernas and the hotel. By law they're required to removed them every night but Greek laws are generally viewed more as guidelines. As moving seventy or so sunbeds and half that many umbrellas would be a lot of work the laws are not enforced they are thus ignored. We try to get the sunbed owners to at least stack the sunbeds behind the umbrellas instead of leaving them splayed across the beach.
With the increased night activity we've started stacking them ourselves on the first walk of the night and then unstacking them on our last walk. Vanessa and I moved quietly down the Kaminia section of Mounda beach scanning the wet sand for tracks and systematically flipping over sunbeds and pushing them together.
My shirt was damp by the time we reached the end of Kaminia. I sat cross-legged on a squishy mat of sea grass, pulled out my MP3 player and listened to a podcast of This American Life until my watch tolled 11 o'clock. I quietly roused Vanessa and headed down the beach. A quarter moon hung in the sky at our backs providing much appreciated illumination. There had been no moon for the week previous.
The waves rolled in gently. I strolled glad that we there was no sunbed flipping to do on this pass. 11 minutes into our walk I caught the familiar tracks glistening in the wet sand. They disappeared behind a turned up sunbed. I signaled for Vanessa to stop. My eyes swept up the beach catching the tracks skirting another turned up sunbed. A dark oblong moved in slow jerky movements towards the top of the beach. I dropped to my to my stomach and crawled up using the sunbeds as cover.
Coming up even with the second sunbed I paused. I could her clearly now. She flung sand around with all her flippers clearing a body pit. A car passed by on the road above, it's headlights illuminated her for a second. Perhaps startled the female abandoned the pit and lurched farther up the beach. I lost sight of her behind a low rise. I heard her begin digging again at the vegetation line. Plumes of sand shot up sporadically over the rise.
I waited for ten minutes or so. I couldn't hear her and the kicking up the sand had stopped. She was moving into her egg laying phase. I decided to give it a few minutes to make sure. Suddenly, in my periphery I caught movement. The dark oblong shape was laboring back down the beach.
Uh oh. She had evidently not liked her second nesting site either and decided to head back to sea. We'd have to stop her. Stop her momentarily at least. I yanked my head torch out of my pocket, signaled for Vanessa to come up and secured the elastic strap of the torch around my head. Standing up, I walked quickly toward. She was big. Her powerful flippers propelled her across the sand. I stepped behind her and grabbed her shell on either side of her head on what we would equate with her shoulders.
She surged forward nearly bringing me down on top of her. I fell to my knees and dug into the stand stopping her advance. She hissed shaking her massive head back and forth. It was all I could do to hold to her. This one had evidently not laid eggs as the process tires them out. She pushed forward and I dug in deeper.
Vanessa came up wearing her red head torch. “What do I do?” she said.
“Take the the bag,” I said through gritted teeth. I had a messenger bag with all the night patrol slung around my shoulder. I loosed a hand so she could get it off of me and quickly regained my grasp on the writhing turtle. “Get the water out. We have to see if she's tagged.”
Vanessa dropped to her knees and began trying the wash off the flippers checking for tags. The female wasn't happy about that. She began to spin me around in place making a low hissing the whole time. The scientific name for this sea turtle is the Caretta Caretta but the the common name for them is the Loggerhead so called because of their disproportionately large heads holding a large beak and powerful jaws. They use these jaws to crush snails, clams and other shellfish. Manu has assured us that they're not aggressive creatures but as I hung on to that one hundred and eighty pound hissing beast as it spun me around I was sure it wanted a piece of us.
Vanessa scampered ahead of the jaws washing off flippers and checking for tags. “I don't think she has one.”
“Okay,” I breathed. “Get the pliers and a tag out.”
The female had stopped whirling for a moment and tried to push off of my legs toward the sea. “What's the number?”
“K 223. Pointy side down?”
“Yeah. Wash the flipper off again. You'll have to hold it.”
The turtle hissed and began trying to turn again. I leaned against the turn and managed to hold her relatively still.
“Right here?”
I looked down. Vanessa held the pliers readied around the green webbing between two long “finger” bones of the flipper. “Yeah,” I said. “Don't hesitate.”
Vanessa clamped down with both hands. Pulling the pliers away the tag appeared firmly attached. “Check under the flipper to see if it went through.” It did. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Get the notebook out with the data sheet.” I talked Vanessa through taking the measurements of the carapace and did my best to get out of her way whilst holding on to the squirming turtle. Turtle Twister meets Turtle wrestling. The female took me on several more loops around as we recorded data concerning her shell condition and barnacles.
“I think that's everything,” Vanessa said
I took a look at the sheet to confirm. It had only been ten minutes but my shoulders and back were already aching. When the female took another lunge toward the sea I let her go. I said back in the sand and took a deep breath. The female padded quickly down the beach and disappeared into sea. Hopefully she's not to traumatized.
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