Our Latest News- July 19, 2026

Svoronata Field Station 

It’s been a busy time here at Svoronata field station! 

We’ve had lots of new and excited volunteers eager to learn about the coastal conservation we carry out. The volunteers learned about the variety of bird species that we see on bird surveys, including our recent observation of the return of the Common Green and Wood Sandpiper. 

The volunteers were lucky enough to also see other coastal species including dolphins and loggerhead sea turtles during recent bird survey shifts! In their second week, they were able to learn more about several more coastal species during our presentations and workshops. 

During a light pollution shift the volunteers worked hard surveying two different beaches in one evening and were also lucky to come across a nesting female sea turtle on the beach! 

Many sting rays and sea turtles have been seen consistently the past couple of weeks during snorkel survey shifts. We have also now expanded our coverage to 7 beaches, which will enable us to further map and monitor larger areas of sea grass along Kefalonia’s coastline! 

This past week we’ve had an exciting development for our sand dune surveys, as the team mapped out another beach and identified new unknown plant species!

Finally, we have now reached 74 sea turtle emergences on our remote nesting beaches, 12 of which being successful nests!

Education Program and Lourdas Field Station 

The Education Programme has officially begun for the 2026 season, and is off to a fantastic start!  The Lourdas survey area now has 10 protected nests, 8 of which were carefully relocated by the team.  By relocating nests to the wider, quieter Kanali beach, we ensure that they are safer from threats such as inundation and light pollution, giving the eggs the best chance at development and hatching.  Recently, one morning survey involved two relocations totalling 254 eggs! We are also grateful to have excellent support from our Lourdas Team volunteers.

A recent volunteer group at the Education Programme were lucky enough to witness a nesting female on Lourdas beach on their first morning survey shift.  They then had the opportunity to watch the nest be relocated safely to Kanali.  The groups have thrown themselves into the shifts with much enthusiasm, identifying many local fish species, including a ray, while on snorkel surveys.  On harbour surveys, groups have successfully recorded many foraging events and interactions between turtles.  One harbour survey group were very helpful with tracking a potentially injured turtle with a line entanglement.  Presentations have been successful so far, with all groups excited to get involved with workshops.  We are looking forward to a busy and exciting season here at the Education Programme.

Lixouri Field Station 

Here in Lixouri, we have had an eventful couple of weeks! We’ve had 88 emergences, resulting in 20 nests across all our survey areas. Our night survey team have seen 9 turtles, 2 of which are newly tagged. On one of our morning survey areas, Vatsa, we had a surprise visit from a nesting female. It was fantastic for our morning survey team to experience this and relocated the nest that morning. 

Lixouri has entered the hatching season, with three nests hatching and our first inventory taking place on Megas Lakkos! We experienced our first hatch of the year on Kounopas, found by our Lepeda morning survey team. As well as that, a nest was found by hatching on one of our Loggos beaches! This is really exciting, and we expect to be busy in the coming weeks! 

Also in the Lixouri area, we had a fisherman spot a turtle with a fishing line attached to it. The turtle was then taken to Argostoli where it was assessed by the team. The turtle then went to the vet, where the hook and line were successfully removed, and it was released.   

Argostoli Field Station 

Here in Argostoli, the nesting season continues to keep our volunteers busy! Over the past two weeks, our team has been carrying out morning beach surveys, protecting nests, and responding to turtle rescues.

Our nest count has now risen to 92 nests across our monitored beaches. One particularly exciting find was a nest containing over 140 eggs! Due to its vulnerable location, the nest was carefully relocated to a safer area of the coastline to give the eggs the best chance of hatching successfully. Our volunteers will continue monitoring the nests as we prepare for the first hatchlings to emerge in the coming weeks.

We have also responded to three turtle rescues involving fishing line entanglement, a long-line hook injury and, sadly, an intentional head injury. The fishing line was safely removed from ‘Turtlelini’, while the long-line hook was successfully dislodged from Catlin following a visit to the vets. We are delighted to share that both turtles were assessed as fit to return to the wild and were released back into the ocean, where they swam away strongly.

Edith, who sustained a severe head injury, has been flown to the Athens Rescue Centre for rehabilitation – a first for Wildlife Sense and Kefalonia!

These rescues are another reminder of the impact of marine pollution, discarded fishing gear and anthropogenic activity on sea turtles. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who reports turtles in need and supports our rescue efforts, and in this case a special thank you to ARCHELON for arranging the transport with Goldair Handling and all those involved with the care and safe transportation of ‘Edith’ to Athens.

Skala Field Station 

This week in Skala, our volunteers have been flat out helping to conserve the coastline. They have swum a whopping 20km helping to map seagrass found at vital nesting beaches, during these snorkels they saw a wide range of marine life including sea bream, damsel fish and loggerhead turtles! We have also managed to hit double digits of nests on one of our nesting beaches! The volunteers worked really hard to find and dig these, managing to dig a total of 5 nests within the space of a week!

Off shift our volunteers have enjoyed evening activities including watching a very tense World Cup semi-final, henna night, and of course the classic souvlaki night!

Having said goodbye to our previous volunteers, we now welcome our largest group of the season! This group absolutely smashed training day and were lucky enough to see a loggerhead turtle during their practise swim. They’ve managed to beat this season’s number of quadrats done during a sandunes shift! Despite the heat, our volunteers have shown nothing but enthusiasm during all shifts as well as presentations, including a new one- Marine Species Identification. We are so excited to do even more shifts and presentations with them over the next few weeks!