Our Latest News- September 8, 2025
Lixouri Field Station
Over in Lixouri we have had a bittersweet week as we waved goodbye to our last group of volunteers and welcomed a new group who we are enjoying getting to know! These volunteers are having fun on their shifts – especially morning surveys and evening light pollution shifts which are quickly becoming the groups favorites! They have also been touched by the heartwarming first experience of watching hatchlings go out to sea!
A few evenings ago, we inventoried 4 nests on Megas Lakkos, which is a darker sand beach. During these inventories, 286 hatchlings across the 4 nests were successfully helped to sea! This was a fantastic experience for our staff, volunteers and public alike! In other positive news, volunteers have been putting in great effort down at the harbor! Aside from monitoring turtle activity, volunteers have been keeping an eye out for things like rubbish and oil, which can be threats to our turtles and marine life more generally. Volunteers on our morning harbor shifts have been fishing rubbish out of the water, improving the aesthetics of the surrounding area, and removing threats to our sea turtles.
Education Program
We have now welcomed and said goodbye to our final groups with the Education Programme. During the last two weeks, the groups have helped record over 100 hatchling tracks safely making their way to sea, even in the wet and windy weather, recorded a variety of marine species during snorkel surveys, and carried out some incredible beach cleans, which is vital work in keeping the coastal areas free from debris and litter. Everyone from the Education Programme Team would like to say a huge thank you to all the volunteers and staff who have joined us this season. We have all enjoyed sharing our conservation efforts with you!
Hatching season is continuing to go well in the Lourdas area, with only 17 nests left on Kanali. Even if there are no protected nests on a beach, it is still important that all beaches in the Lourdas area are monitored. This was reinforced one morning when the team discovered a new Found By Hatching (FBH) nest on Lourdas Beach. An FBH is a nest not found from adult female tracks but from the hatchling tracks. The team investigated and was able to find the nest and check that it was safe, and record all the data.
Argostoli Field Station
Peak hatching season is upon the Argostoli field station. August saw us finishing nests on two of our beach survey areas and our nest count is dropping by the day with over 4000 hatchlings helped safely to sea last month. We ended the month with a busy night for both our team and volunteers. A storm was
approaching meaning we had to check all of our nests for hatchlings and ensure they were safely released to sea. The next morning we inspected them again to make sure that the heavy rain hadn’t caused a hard layer of sand to form over the nests. This could possibly prevent hatchlings from emerging.
We are looking forward to the next few weeks which will be filled with even more hatchlings. Our volunteers are working hard to monitor our nests and are really enjoying their hatchling rescue shifts where they have the opportunity to ensure that no hatchlings are disorientated as a result of light pollution. We have had a lovely few weeks meeting members of the public on our harbour shifts and at our public inventories and answering all questions regarding sea turtles and conservation. We are looking forward to educating more people in the upcoming weeks.
Skala Field Station
We have now said goodbye to our most recent group of volunteers, who approached all their work with enthusiasm and commitment. They collected over 300 pieces of debris during their beach clean surveys, contributing to the worldwide database with the aim of creating marine debris management in these areas. 300 quadrats were surveyed in their sand dune surveys, with 27 different species of plant identified, and beach profile shifts covered 1317.17 m of land, providing insight into how our beaches change over time.
During our snorkel shifts, they took a total of 10,645 photos of the seafloor, helping to monitor the seagrass development in the area. Lots of marine life was spotted during shifts and free time, producing some beautiful photos of the loggerhead turtles in the area, as well as an octopus and a fireworm being spotted for the first time this season! Now, we have welcomed our smallest group of volunteers who are excited to get stuck into their shifts. A successful first snorkel survey produced great photos of the seafloor, as well as spotting a little ray. We look forward to seeing what this group achieves!
Svoronata Field Station
This week has been a busy one! With the help of our teams, we were able to cover around 22km of sea floor during snorkel surveys, recorded over 37 species of birds and even saw a rare green sea turtle on a survey!
During one of the bird surveys, the team managed to photograph and identify a Marsh Harrier, which many of the volunteers were eager to see. This monitoring allows us to see migratory trends throughout the year as we are able to track and observe the different species coming and going seasonally. As an example of this, we saw the return of the flamingo, which was the first sighting in 2025 for Wildlife Sense.
The volunteers also helped identify two new species of plants! This work will go towards mapping new dune surveys and seeing if any other plants can be identified. Another exciting thing that happened was that we did our first light pollution shift on a new beach! This data will contribute to challenging the way we view marine protected areas.
This week, we have also welcomed a new group of volunteers who are excited to get stuck in and experience the joys of helping to conserve our beaches and wildlife.
