facing some dangers

There are lots of barriers to overcome for the turtles - starting from the nest, finding their way to the sea as hatchlings and surviving all the dangers in the ocean to come back to the beach where they were born twenty years later.

We made a trip to Dalyan. After we walked along the beautiful beach with more than 400 nests we went to the Rescue Center and saw the tanks with injured turtles. Most of the injuries were caused by fishery-equipment or by ship propellers.

In the nests, parasites can infest the eggs, such as larvae from Diptera or Tenebrionidae. Natural egg or hatchling predators at the beach are ghost crabs, birds, dogs, martens and hedgehogs. We try to do our best to prevent the nests from predation, but sometimes it's too late.

As we don't do nightshifts any more in Yaniklar, we spend our evenings with playing games. In Calis the nightshifts still go on and the number of nests increased up to 33!