Saving Turtles in Turkey

Volunteer Life

by Giovanni Stanislao

I was running in the airport, I had never been so late for a flight in my entire life. When I arrived at the gate it was already closed, and I thought I just lost my connection to go from Istanbul to Mersin, where my ESC project was going to take place. I basically begged the flight manager to let me in, after a while she let me through and I was able to sit on the plane a few minutes before the departure, sweaty and exhausted from the stress.

I was sure I was going to bed as soon as I arrived at the house, that I actually reached really late in the evening. My plan was to meet all the volunteers already working there only the next day. But I was wrong. Someone suggested going to the beach and seeing a turtle laying eggs. At that moment, all my physical and mental tiredness disappeared. That day, my head didn’t touch the pillow until the next morning, around 8am.

I was lucky enough to volunteer during the most interesting period of the year. When summer begins, female turtles come at night to the beach in Kazanli, a small village on the Turkish coast, to dig huge nests and hide their eggs under the sand. Around July, all the mamas are gone and the little turtles start to come out to reach the sea, where they will live for many years before coming back to that very same beach where they were born, to lay eggs and continue the reproductive cycle.

© Giovanni Stanislao

Staying there from June to August meant that I got to see all this happening right in front of my eyes.

Our accommodation was an apartment in one of the 20 old buildings right on “Kazangeles beach”, a mix from Kazanli and Los Angeles, as we liked to call it with a bit of irony. With night shifts of 5 hours, during “mama season” the work would consist in patrolling the beach to protect the turtles and the nests from stray dogs or people. But the “baby season” was the most exciting part.

I remember the first group of baby turtles: when we were still having trouble finding them, only a few hatchlings were on this big beach full of bushes and dunes. It was hard, we had an expert in following traces but us volunteers were there only to watch with admiration as we didn’t know how to manage these things yet.

That night, we felt that those three baby turtles, the firsts of the season, were a huge deal; we were all extremely excited and happy. The number was going to increase really soon, but we would not believe our mentor when he was making fun of us for giving names to every single baby. “Soon you will lose count and you will stop!”, that’s what he said. And he was right. After a couple of weeks we were picking up baby turtles like cherries, hundreds and hundreds of them in one night (but a special mention for my Arya, the first turtle I found by myself, I’m sure she is somewhere in South America living her best life now).

Living on the beach made me discover an amazing ecosystem. Like in a Miyazaki movie, there was a whole world underneath, full of living creatures crawling, breathing, hunting, playing between sand dunes and little bushes. Not only turtles: during our nights there we would often meet a hedgehog trying to hide from our torchlights, lizards and snakes running around, all different kinds of birds, a little chameleon hanging from a branch. Sometimes at sunrise it was even possible to see dolphins close to the shore. At some point, we had problems with a family of foxes that mistook the turtles we were trying to save as a huge free buffet.

Laying eggs© Giovanni Stanislao

Dead Caretta Caretta

© Giovanni Stanislao

But our biggest enemy was the population of crabs on the beach: we could see them, making fun of us without even moving, standing still between the waves or under the sand to

catch and eat the turtles we were releasing to the sea. We all took it as a personal insult: it became the symbol of death for the little cute turtles we loved so much, pushing us to passionately fight back (disclaimer: no crab was harmed for real during the summer).

© Giovanni Stanislao

Obviously, it’s just nature. And nature has a good sense of humor, since some species of turtles have crabs in their adult diet.

What we really had to fight with was human behavior.

The main problem was that the little turtles, distracted by the lights of the city and of the streets, would get attracted away from the sea. Something that would lead to their death once the sun would rise in the morning. That’s why,

after collecting them in boxes, one of us would go in the water with a big torch in order to attract them again all together. The sensation of hundreds of turtles crawling to you and walking on your feet to go away and swim is something unforgettable.

But we also had to be careful and check that people would not disturb the animals in any way. Sadly sometimes this was difficult if not impossible. Easier when we had to deal with drivers illegally using their motorcycle on our beach, harder when we had to bury a huge dead turtle that was stabbed in the belly probably by a fisherman as a reaction for “stealing” the fish.

In general though, I was surprised by the locals. Part of the job was cleaning the beach during the afternoon from the trash and the tons of plastic (I’m sure my friends will agree with me when I say that nobody could ever miss this part of the experience).

But while doing this, everyday someone was stopping by to thank us. The language barrier was not important for them, they would try to speak Turkish or Arabic knowing that we would not understand, expressing their gratitude toward us for taking care of their place.

Not only this: kids from the area would often come and help with the trash or even with the turtles, or just to play volleyball with the volunteers. Some of us would get an invitation to watch a football match in the house of a teenager from there, just because we were fans of the “right” Turkish team, Galatasaray.

A group of local volunteers would guide us through their culture, their food, their traditions, eventually becoming our friends: by day we would play Tavla and drink the best Turkish coffee I’ve ever tasted, by night we would laugh and joke while looking for turtles on the beach.

Chelonia Mydas

© Giovanni Stanislao

The patrolling was a special bonding experience. At first, we were complaining about working at night, as we could not have time and energy to do activities during the day. We believed this was keeping us from connecting and socializing with each other. But we soon realized that it was exactly the opposite: the shared feet pain from too much walking on the sand, the fatigue of this intense and tiring job, the discomfort caused by the extremely hot weather: those things were for sure part of the reason why, in the end, we felt such a strong connection between us.

Living together, doing every single day the same things, cooking for the others, traveling, killing time with card games during the hot afternoons, eating cereals during “mola”- break in turkish- making a common tattoo with some close friends (turtles, obviously!). All that gave me a group of friends that I will miss for a long time.

And the passion we were putting in saving these beautiful animals will probably stay forever.

This experience also changed me on a personal level. I found out that it’s important to communicate with so many people from different countries and culture, to give a little piece of yourself to them, and even though I still have troubles talking about my personal issues and feelings, I think I started to learn how to do it there, in Kazanli, during those walks on the beach.

Like a group of baby turtles, we started and shared this all together. Like the turtles, we had to go through some tough moments as if we were walking down the beach trying to reach the sea. But in the end we managed to touch the water. Together until that moment to eventually separate like turtles, and go our own way, coming back to our lives. But with a luggage of new experiences, amazing memories and a true connection to a place that gifted us with this amazing and unique summer.

Who knows, maybe, exactly like the turtles we saved, one day we will all meet again in Kazangeles.