Finally

yesterdays news from Crete; the first nest has been found; Yioupi, hurray, hurra

Just a short update.

Wow, has it alrerady been four days since the last time? Time flies so fast, and I have been writing a lot on my other blogs these days. I have to recommend them also;

http://watericeandsnow.blogspot.com/
http://arcticview.blogspot.com/
http://extinctandendangeredbirds.blogspot.com/

So far this season there has been only few news from the volunteers in Crete and I got no news since the last time I was writing.

Hope I'll be getting back with more news in one of the next days. But it's also weekend and weekends are the best time for writing. See you soon:-)

Rafetus swinhoei

Everyday I get loads of news about turtles from around the world, some of them are funny, some are interesting, some I don't even bother about, some worries me and some are truly negative to get. The IUCN has a species of the day. As you surely understand it changes every day and since it was yesterdays animal ( what could it be on world Turtle Day?, hm.. )  I wanted to show you, you better se here; http://www.iucnredlist.org/sotdfiles/rafetus-swinhoei.pdf. This is seen upon as the most endangered of all the turtles in the world. Not a big surprise if you know it's only four known individuals left of this species.

Even if it's only four of these animals left, conservationists have not given up. They have placed two of them together in a Zoo, and they have teamed up together, laid eggs. But so far no hatchlings has been produced.  One of the people working on this project is the prominent herpetologist ( a person working with both reptiles and amphibians ) Gerald Kuchling, said that the pairing was a success, so we still must wait in hope for a breeding with hatchlings.

The Rafetus swinhoei, also known as Shanghai soft-shell turtle, Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle, is as the name says, a turtle with a soft shell. And they are really soft sheeled, it's more like a extra thick layer of skin. That leaves them more vulnerable for praying or for being injured from rocks. There are many soft shell turtles around the world and they are found in waterways in almost all the continents. The Rafetus swinhoei area of living has been the Red River of Yunnan and Vietnam, and the lower Yangtze floodplain.

What's the reason then for the turtles to become so close to extinction? The turtles have been used as food and their body, like skull and carapace has been used as medicine or as trophees. Furthermore they are the victims of habitat loss. The more or less only ways to help this turtle is to work more to get the captivated turtles to breed with success and search for other unknown animals in the free.

while we do our effort to help the loggerhead from coming in the same situation, lets give our thought and symbolic help to all those striving for the best of the Rafetus swinhoei

World turtle day

Today it's the world turtle day, a day was started to increase the respect and the knowledge of the turtles. It was started by the organisation American tortoise rescue . It's a non-profit organisation wich aim is to work for the protection of all species of turtles and tortoises. The day was started ten years ago and is slowly getting more and more celebrated.
Here I will link you up to some different webpages that will tell you more about the celebration and what is happening around the world, or has happened already. Since all I find comes from the net, there will off course be a lot lot more of ways to celebrate the day. I will also mention webpages or blogs that also talk about the celebration of the turtles.

First I will mention the organisation that I shall work for this summer, Archelon. When I search the webpages of theirs I find a logo for the day, but nothing about what's gonna happen. To bad, really to bad. I still hope and also think they are doing something. As I also now the turtle nesting season is on it's way, I'm not sure if they have the capacity to celebrate it all over. The daily work for the turtle protection is indeed more important.

The sea turtle restoration project has focused on two ways to celebrate the day. They organise a beach clean up at San Francisco and they also focus on the plastic bags that are so much of a danger for the turtles. So they arrange a make your own re-useable shopping bag.

 

In australia several enviromental organisations has joined their forces in an attempt to focus on the flatback turtle. Around the country they try to make people make sand versions of turtles. Then take a picture of it and send it to enviromental turtle. The wilderness society is one of the organisations participating in this attempt.

Even if it already have started during the winter,  the Emirates Wildlife Society-WWF have started a turtle-tracking project as part of the world turtle day. The project is a cooperation between the Emirates and 4 other countries in that area; Oman Quatar, Saudi-Arabia and Iran. The main-species of the project is the critically endangered Hawksbill turtle. Read more about it here; golfturtles.com

I was disappointed during my search for the celebration of the "World turtle day", the three above-mentioned activities were all that I found. But the day is mentioned in many places and some have done it really well. the Human Society of the USA have listed twelve things that we can do for the turtles and the tortoises. They have also made an article about the celebration.

A blog that's celebrating the "world turtle day" is MINTdegradable. In the blog she is also telling about her personal experiences with the magnificent turtles and what we can do to help them. She's also using it as some kind of advertisement as she says she's working for a company that has made some plastic that's degradeable.

What most worried me when I was searching the net for is that there are also many petfriendly pages with turtepets that talks about the "World Turtle Day". I don't like it. I want all the trade with turtles forbidden. There are enough problems for the turtles and tortoises so we don't need them as pets.

Anyway, go out, enjoy the "World Turtle Day"

The blue flag system

It has been a few days since I last was here to write my carefully chosen words full of spelling mistakes for you. Today I found a little about the beaches in Crete and if they were certified to be a blue flag or not. It's the organisation FEE thas is responsible for this certification. FEE is an organisation that's "aiming to promote sustainable development through environmental education". One of the things they are responsible for is to certifie beaches along the world via the blue flag. The blue flag certification is a eco-label that beaches or marinas can apply for. It's spreading more and more out around the world and now the blue flag certification can be found in Europe, South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada and the Caribbean . As you can see large parts of the world are still not taking part of the blue flag system, but as the system gets more and more known I'm sure it will grow. So far there are just three beaches in Norway that has been found good enough to get a blue flag.

What are the Criteria to become a "blue flag"-beach? There are many many of them, so I will just pick a few to display here;
- Information about "blue flag", and a list of the criteria to get the blue flag
- Information about the water quality, and also fulfill the criteria made for this.
- Having enviromental activities, like  improve the consciousness of visitors and residents in the area about the
   local enviroment.
- Enviromental information; about the ecosystem in the neighbourhood, and information about protected or
   vulnerable nature areas in nearby sorroundings. It also includes information about protected or vulnerable birds, reptiles, fishes, plants and other living creatures.
- A map of the area, displaying toilets, protected areas, phones, water quality measurement areas, parking,
  "you are here"-marking and a lot of other things.
- Rules for the area, like opening-hours, driving, camping and animals.

In Crete, or to be more spesific, in our area along the coast of Platanias, the main beaches that we survey are all included in the blue flag system, both the Platanias, the Gerani and the Maleme beach.

I can't help wondering, do they really deserve the blue flag? When I think about the information that I have seen along those beaches, much information has been lacking or not present at all. Ok. I didn't go along the beaches looking for it, so maybe I'm to quick to judge. And maybe I need to go along the beaches this year to search for all the things they need to fulfill to be a part of the blue flag system.

The greeks have a term; fakelaki. This means " little envelope". It's a common way of bribery troughout the whole country. Could it be that it also could happen when it comes to the "blue flag"-certification, only with bigger envelopes?. I hope my suspiscion will be proven wrong.

Happy turtle news

While I almost all the time feel tat I get bad news about the turtles, there are some surprises. And what kind of surprises, because I was not even looking for news about turtles, I was checking a birding community from Birdlife International. On the page it was a map with some news from around the worls. Curious as I am, I had to see what it was. One was the news about some work for one of the most endangered warblers ( birds,, what a shock ), the next I was looking at was; yeah, good news about a turtle, The numbers of nesting hawkbills turtles has increased. It is now considered to be eight times as high as it was in the early seventies.

So it's really true conservation works, at least some places. The hawkbill turtle is one of the turtles where it has been a large international trade. The trade has been for it's raw shell and the meat. Later there has been a ban on this international trade. Even if this hazard have been minimized there are many other hazards; bycatch from the fishing industries is one of them. Destruction of their nesting habitats is another. Even this, the population in the reserve has inclined with really good numbers.

 The hawksbill  is regarded by the IUCN redlist as crically endangered and the world population has decreased with 80% during the last three turtlebill turtle generation. So even though the population are increasing in some protected area this was reall not so good news in the end :-(

The Archelon

This summer, when I'm in Crete, I will be working Archelon, the sea turtle portection society of Greece. The organisation has taken it's name from the largest known turtle species to have lived, Archelon. Archelon means Ruler turtle, and this turtle has more or less ruled on the sea where it lived.

A specimen of the Archelon from the Yale Peabody museum, Yale University

Most fossiles of the archelon is found in the South-Dakota and Wyoming states in the USA. In the time it lived this was part of an occean. This occean coverd most parts of the Mid-USA. The Archelon lived for 65-75 million years ago. The largest of these animals found was a specimen found in South Dakota and it was more than 4 meters long and even longer from one flipper to the other.

Very often when I think of amazing animals like the Archelon I would like to be able to travel back in time. Going back to the geological period of Cretacous to see the Archelon roam free in the sea would be wonderful. All I can do now is to dream myself and see myself swim along the Archelon.

The hazard of being a turtle

Being a turtle ain't easy, and the more human activity the harder to be a turtle. There are many hazards for the turtles to meet in their life. Today I have a picture from seaturtle.org. It's showing a turtle captured under a beach chair. I don't know the story behind the picture so I don't know if the turtle is alive or if it has died from it. If a turtle has luck it will survive this incident, if it's not so it may die.

                   The picture is taken by DuBose Griffin on Kiawah Island, SC USA.

In Crete we ask hotels to please stock up sunbeds during nighttime to leave the area open so female turtles can come on land, find a good spot for laying it''s eggs before it returns into the sea. If a turtle encounter a sunbed, beach unbrella, beach chair or other items on the beach, it will often just turn around walk out into the sea without nesting. If this happens two/three times in a row, turtles are also known to just let the eggs loose in the sea.So they are not breeding at that time. Many other things are also troubles for the turtles. More of that later.

“Travelling with Sea Turtles in the Mediterranean”

As a part of the international year for biodiversity the MEDASSET and Athens international airport Athens international airport has together put up a photography exhibition. It  is called..; yeah, guess what? Ok since it was so hard I will say it "travelling with sea turtles in the mediterranean". The exhibition is not just about the turtles, but the turtles will be the guides to the flora and fauna of the Mediterranenan. They have just chosen the sea turtle as a flagship species. Btw, is a sea turtle one species? Hm, I was sure it was seven species all together, but I must be wrong.

In the exhibition ( wonder how many times I use that word here? ) we will be guided trough many of the dangers that's are around for the fauna and flora in the Mediterranean. Dangers like pollution, climate change, and several more.

Here are some of the pictures from the exhibition. All of them are from the main photographer of the exhibition, Yiannis Issaris.

 

  

As you all can see there are beautiful pictures in this exhibition. So if you're going to the airport in Athens this summer, please take a look at the exhibition and if you can, please support the MEDASSET or other groups working for nature and it's biodiversity. 

 

 

The International Year of Biodiversity

Every year the United nations dedicates the year to one special topic. In 2009 it was UN's international year for the astronomy, and it had many arrangements around Norway. In 2011 it will be UN's international year of chemistry. This year The UN has chosen to focus on biodiversity.

The turtler season has started

Now the turtler season has started. The turtlers are the people that are working for the turtles in the field as volunteers during the breeding season. The two leaders we've got have now arrived in Crete and will start working with setting up the camp, fixing details to be ready before the turtles start breeding and the other volunteers to come along.
The two leaders we will have in Gerani are John and Mel Melville. Both were there also last year so we will have experienced leaders this year. Gratulations John and Mel. John is also writing a blog about this topic that's worth checking out; herbincrete

I can't wait to get there:-)

Videos - Nature photography - images from the Wild Wonders of Europe.

Ahh, I should really get out and enjoy the beautiful nature I have around me. Here on the border to the Arctic, instead, I'm home, hopelessly lost in a webpage of ultimate photographies. It's beyond my imagination to think of all these wonderful motives. Even more it's even further beyond my patience to spend this time waiting for the perfect moment, waiting for the perfect second to come along.

The unbelievable is believable

It has been a few days since the last time I was in here to write. One of those days I got so much turtle-info I never got decided what to write about. Well, now I'm back, ready to write. And what will I write about? Turtles? No, absolutely not. I just have to write about this sensational sighting that occured some days ago.

These days there has been no big sensations concerning the turtles, at least from the news I have got. We need to turn our attention to a much larger vertebrate, in fact one of the largest at all, the Gray whale. It's a baleen whale that can get as big as 15-16 meters long. But it's size does not really matter, not in this context. So maybe I better get to the point and not just write lots of unimportant stuff?

Ok, the Gray whale is one of the most rarest whales and is by the IUCN regarded as endangered. At present there are two populations of the whale, one in the eastern pacific and one in the western pacific. The one in the western pacific is regarded as critically endangered and are now consisting of no more than approx 130 animals, 25-30 of these are supposed to be reproductive females. The eastern pacific population was also regarded as on the brink of extinction but has now gained numbers. And now it's believed to be around 22 000 individuals.

So where is my story going? Hm, I once again just ended up talking about some blah blah blah, so I finally have to come to my point. For a few days ago there was a sighting of one Gray whale in the sea outside Israel, and that's the shocking, very shocking part of the story. As I said there are two populations of Gray whales in the world and both of them live in the Pacific. Can you imagine the long ride, ehh, the long swim this whale must have taken. If I'm modest I must say I'm absolutely chocked, if I'm honest I feel I have to say it's unbelievable. My source is the BBC earth news . Since I consider them as a reliable source, I do in fact also belive in the unbelievable. Hm, this is almost a religous moment for me. Hope it stays in the Mediterranean for the summer and show it's self off it's for us turtler's. Maybe I even won't be looking for turtles in the summer. Just desperately staring out over the sea in hope. A long gone hope, but yet a hope...

Many dead turtles found on beaches in the gulf of Mexico

As the turtles breeding season are on it's way and many restrictions are made in various areas to help and protect the breeding turtles, many dead turtles have been found dead along the shores close to the oilspill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The latest number of dead turtles I have found is 35, and among them are 33 Kemp' ridley's. The most endangred of all the turtles. So far there has been no clues that the deaths are because of the oilspill. Many of the dead turtles shows instead signs of have been hit my boats, or have been entangled in fishnets, have been in contact with fishhooks or other fishery equipment.

The season for shrimpfishing is also on top now, just as the Kemp Ridley's get into shalllower waters to nest. Then they are more likely to get in conflict with the fisheries, either the boats or the tools that are used during the fishing.

But as I also said there isn't just bad news, but the good news i will come back to later. Now it's a wonderful day here in my hometown and I will go out and enjoy it.

Hybridization among the seaturtles

Today I found a nice photo of a turtle hatchling on  Seaturtle.org . It shows us what they think can be a hybrid between the green turtle and the loggerhead turtle. And my first thought was, how will I be able to find out this if it should happen this summer when I'm at Crete working with the loggerhead turtle.

A loggerhead released at Marathon

Today when I was browsing trough my RSS-feed I saw that a loggerhead turtle was released at Marathon. The first thing in mind was tot hink that Archelon had released a new turtle now. Ok, I might should have been suspicious, since they also released three green turtles just before the loggerhead. And why release the turtles at Marathon, it must have been better places that the Archelon could have released the loggerhead. Opening the post and looking at it, I saw the truth. The loggerhead had been released at Marathon in the Florida Keys. Hope it don't swim into the oilspill longer east in the gulf of Mexico.

Here's the full story: CBS4

Turtles being victims for the oilspill in the Mexico gulf?

Yesterday the 3th of May, The Guardian has a longer article that's about the fact that the death of turtles are get higher now during the Deepwater Horizon-oilspill. When it was published already 31 turtles had been found dead on the beaches in the area. The area stretches for approx 26 miles of beaches.

In the area there are several species of turtles, among them the Loggerhead, the leatherback
and the Kemp's ridley turtle. The whole population of the Kemp's Ridley lives along the gulf of Mexico and is the most critically endangered turtle in the world. As the main habitat for the Kemp's Ridley is along shallow sand and mud shores and eustaries it can be especially in danger for the oilspill.

So far there has not been any clear evidence that the turtles are victims for the oil, but the big number of turtles dead so quickly in the area close to the oilspill makes it probably that the oil is the reason for their death.

The dead turtles will be examined at the Institute of Sea Mammal Studies in Gulfport, an institute that specialises in the study and treatment of marine mammals like whales and turtles, along with other marine life. Among the things they will check at the insitute is if the turtles have got problems with their respiratory from inhaling oil fumes or if they have consumed food contiminated with oilk.

A team of vets would be looking to see if the animals had respiratory problems associated with inhaling oil fumes, or had consumed fish contaminated with oil.. There will also be taken samples from them to check if they are contaminated with oil.

I'm not optimistic but now I feel all I can do is cross my fingers and hope it's will be better for the wildlife than I expect

An endangered group of animals.

Sometimes we can see large amount of turtle youngsters on their way to the sea, like on yesterday's you tube clip, and it seems like there should be no trouble for the turtles. The truth is totally different and among the seven species of the seaturtles, three of them are considered as critically endangered and three of them as endangered, by the IUCN Redlist.

Even if the sea turtles can make quite big clutches of hatchling they face a tough life before getting in to the maturity age. At all it's reckoned that only one out of hundred turtle hatchlings will reach adulthood. The hazards are many already on their way from the nest to the sea.

First of all, they may not even go down towards the sea. The hatchlings move towards the strongest lights. So if the nest is in an area with much human development they risk being attracted to the wrong light, like road lights, from hotels and other human artifical lights.

The hatchlings are also a prey for other animals, foxes, dogs, pigs and more. The sun will eventually make the hatchlings get weaker and even dry out.

Amazing race to the sea, part II. The olive ridley turtle

Here's another amasing race to the sea. The Olive ridley turtle is the smallest of the sea turtles and have a particular special thing about them. The Arribada. The Arribada is that hundreds and sometimes thousands of female turtles has gathered together outside the breeding beaches and then enters the breeding grounds at once, on the same day, the same night. This synchronized breeding also means that the hatchlings get out of their nests at the same time. When thousands and thousands of hatchlings run to the sea it''s absolutely astonishing to follow, just see the video.


Why this happens? Well, scientists have many theories but so far they have not been able to conclude on any specific reason. during the hatchlings race to the sea they often encounter vast amount of predators that are getting a real feast. Still it may be a survival trick. When so many hatch at once there are always big chances for many many of them. This is a known trick for many animalgroups, larger numbers are safer than small numbers.

The Ridley's doesn't only have the habitat of Arribada, in most of their breeding grounds they are more solitare breeders, coming up one and one of the time, over a longer timespan. So that's also an unanswered question, why have these different strategies?

In the area I will go to we will never experience anything like Arribada; on several kilometers beaches we are monitoring we are  really lucky if we discover 60 nests, and they have been lade in a timeinterval for over two months. We feel happy just by the luck of seing the hatchlings from one nest. So we need to always bring our cameras with us, if not our luck may gone by..