Our latest news – April 22, 2024
At the beginning of this month, we welcomed our first group of volunteers to the project. They arrived during an unusually sunny week in Kefalonia which meant beach cleaning shifts and beach profiling shifts in the evening were lovely and warm! The volunteers have enjoyed visiting the local beaches specifically Megali Amos.
During our first week of tagging, 43 turtles were measured in our Capture-Mark-Recapture project, and we tagged 24 new turtles. This part of the project is essential to collect data on the foraging and mating turtles in the harbour and lagoon area of Argostoli. Alongside placing tags, we also measure each sea turtle to monitor how our turtles grow over the years! Our volunteers have enjoyed coming up with names for our new turtles such as Wham, Chilli and Diesel! Unfortunately, during tagging, we also observed instances in which turtles had suffered injuries from propeller strikes. Fortunately, the injuries were healing well, and we were able to release them once the injury was fully recorded. Our team also found one loggerhead that had seven hooks in its mouth. We were able to remove the hooks on-site and complete the usual tagging processes. We are looking forward to the next few weeks left of mating season!
On one day our volunteers enjoyed a day tour of the island where they visited a very foggy Mount Ainos! We then visited Sami and Agia Efimia where the weather brightened up and we had food at a local cafe! On the way back to Argostoli we visited Myrtos where we saw the incredible blue waters! Other activities enjoyed by the volunteers this week were a movie night and Harry’s famous Rockbuster quiz! This went down a treat with volunteers and they have more activities to look forward to in the coming weeks!
