Ainslie swaps penguin patrols for turtle-tagging
Ainslie Wilson is volunteering on the Marine Turtle Conservation Project in northern Cyprus. Photo: Supplied.
Having finished another cruise ship season in South Georgia in the remote South Atlantic, former Motupipi School teacher and Collingwood resident Ainslie Wilson has left the snow, ice and penguins and opted for sun, sand and turtles in the Mediterranean.
For three months Ainslie is living in northern Cyprus and volunteering on the Marine Turtle Conservation Project.
Both the loggerhead and green turtles, which nest on Cyprus, are regarded as endangered species. Their survival is threatened because it is estimated that only one hatchling in a thousand reaches its breeding age of 30 years.
The majority of volunteers in Cyprus are at the main base at Alagadi. The volunteers patrol the beaches all night and when they find a nesting female she is tagged, micro-chipped, DNA-sampled and measured. This year satellite trackers will also be attached to nesting females to record what they do between nestings.
Ainslie is in charge of a smaller base on the west coast of Cyprus. It runs daytime patrols. The remote beaches there can only be reached by four-wheel-drive vehicles across rocky and sandy terrain that is often used as training ground by the Turkish Cypriot Army. The beaches are monitored daily to record nesting activities, protect nests from predation and relocate nests laid too close to the sea to safer sites. Later in the season, as the hatchlings emerge from their nests, they are collected, measured and DNA- sampled before being released safely into the sea.
Little is known about the behaviour of male turtles because they are almost never seen on land, so the volunteers were excited the other night when they saw what they thought was a very large turtle coming ashore. It was in fact a mating pair, the female carrying the male.
“This was too good an opportunity to miss,” said Ainslie, “so all hands were called for to help hold the male—when he had finished his business—so a satellite tracker could be attached to his shell. We were receiving information about his movements the very next day.”
It is high summer in the Mediterranean and in order to avoid the hottest part of the day, Ainslie and her fellow volunteers are on the beach by 5.30 in the morning.
“I haven’t had a summer for three years so I was really looking forward to being hot, but this heat is a different story,” said Ainslie. “I’m in a complete lather from dawn to dusk and I can’t do anything outside in the afternoon for fear of melting into the ground.”
Ainslie said that she has been surprised by the pollution of the beaches in Cyprus and indeed in the whole Mediterranean. “From a distance the beaches all look postcard-gorgeous,” she said. “But up close they’re covered with litter. Locals literally don’t see the litter or care about it; they leave their rubbish behind and more comes in with the tide. It appears that a lot of surrounding countries dump their garbage into the sea and it all ends up on the beaches of Cyprus. Walking the beaches each day is a mixture of enjoying the gorgeous colour of the sea and disgust at the state of the beach. I never walk barefoot. As part of the Alagadi beach work, the volunteers spend the Sunday afternoons on the beach armed with a Turkish phrase book and bin bags trying to convince the locals to take their rubbish to the bins in the car park.”
Ainslie will head back to South Georgia at the beginning of September, exchanging the bikini for thermals again.
The project has a daily blog at <www.turtleproject09.blogspot.com> and the male turtle-tracking information is at <www.seaturtle.org>. Neil Wilson
