Our Latest News- June 14, 2026
Lixouri Field Station
After a successful changeover, we now have our second group of volunteers, and it’s been off to a good start! On training day, we took them down to a track on Loggos, which was believed to have a nest. The volunteers found the nest and that same evening watched it being relocated to the hatchery. This was one of our 4 relocation, with this being the first on one of our Loggos beaches.
Since the start of the season, we have had 96 recorded emergences, and from these we now have 13 nests, which is exciting and looking forward to hitting 100 emergences in the coming days! Through these emergences, we have seen tracks in all 4 of our survey areas! In this group of volunteers, we have had our first full week of night surveys! The volunteers have been lucky enough to encounter 3 turtles, 2 of which nested, one of them being a returning turtle, Raine!
Our volunteers have also loved getting involved with other data collection, including beach clean, beach profile and harbour, where multiple turtles have been spotted! In their free time, we have engaged in a fajita night, souvlaki night and games night!
Argostoli Field Station
And just like that… our capture-mark- recapture project is over until October! Here in Argostoli we’ve had 229 sea turtles out of the water in both April and May, 131 of those being untagged. We couldn’t have done it without our fantastic volunteers!
With this coming to an end, that can only mean one thing… nesting season is well and truly upon us. Volunteers have been up bright and early, cycling to our local beaches and completing morning surveys to discover nests before holidaymakers arrive. Thanks to all of their hard work, we are off to a strong start with nests on all of our survey beaches in the Argostoli area.
We were also happy to say our recovering sea turtle, Kyra, was released back into the water after receiving first aid treatment here at our Argostoli field station.
It was a joy to welcome ALan Rees to the villa for an insightful Q&A with both our volunteers and staff. ALan is the Vice Chair of IUCN SSC Marine Turtle Specialist Group and the founder of the Marine Turtle Newsletter, so it’s safe to say he knows his stuff!
Skala Field Station
The sun is out and the start of the Skala season has arrived! Our first volunteers arrived on Thursday and have had a very busy few days learning the ropes!
The group have shown lots of high energy and great enthusiasm for all the surveys so far, allowing us to complete two snorkel surveys – despite the chilly water, our volunteers have collected vital data on the location of Posidonia and Cymodocea seagrass along Mounda beach!
Beach clean surveys on Mounda are well underway, with the volunteers taking very good care of all of our beaches, removing 6 large bags of rubbish already! This has allowed us to gather lots of data ready to send to our partner organisation, NOAA.
In their downtime, the volunteers have had a chance to join some evening group activities, including a sunset swim. Which was much needed after a long, hot day of surveying! We’re so excited for the season ahead to get going!
Svoronata Field Station
It’s been an exciting first few weeks at Svoronata field station, and things are in full swing!
The volunteers have been really enthusiastic, carrying out various shifts but also getting involved in exciting opportunities that have arisen to further expand their knowledge!
For example, we took the group of volunteers for the first turtle nesting habitat exploration shift, where we took the boat to remote beaches that were yet to be searched by a team of volunteers in this way for turtle nesting tracks. Everyone was really excited and engaged, conducting thorough searches for tracks, and then upon finding a potential nest, everyone worked together to help classify the track, investigate the potential nest and establish that no nest was made.
Another exciting first was the first light pollution shift of 2026, where volunteers were investigating the impact of artificial light at night and the most likely source of this. They learnt about the potential negative impact of this on an adult sea turtle’s nesting ability on that beach and the sea turtle hatchlings’ ability to get to the sea.
The volunteers have had sightings of several species of birds during bird survey shifts, and the first photograph of a Water Rail bird by Wildlife Sense during a bird survey shift was taken!
Furthermore, a couple of the volunteers dedicated their time to get involved in a unique and interesting opportunity of going to see the retrieval of an unfortunately dead Mediterranean monk seal.
Everyone has been very busy working hard on snorkel surveys, having covered a lot of transects now across Minies beach and ticking off several exciting species on snorkel bingo alongside data entry, including Myliobatis aquila, for example.
It’s been a great couple of weeks with two groups of volunteers, and everyone is really eager to learn and discover even more as the season progresses!
