“MURTER ECO-PATROL” TOOK PART IN TREASURE HUNT.

Murter Eco-patrol on Saturday, 19 March 2016, on the Gradina hill took part in a “treasure hunt” and learnt about biodiversity of the island of Murter.

The Gradina hill still hides secrets of different groups of people who called this hill their home. The first traces of settlement ruins date back to the prehistory (11th century BC). History of Gradina hill is turbulent. The first inhabitants of this area go back to the 11th century BC, while the Romans, Liburnians and Croats inhabited it later on. Archeologists have been digging up and discovering their secrets for the past few years and the members of the Murter eco patrol did exactly this same thing last Saturday. They learned about the secrets of the flora and fauna that exists there and that has been there even before the Romans, Liburnians and Croats.

Vice, the person in charge of Argonauta, showed the members of the eco patrol a presentation about the biodiversity of the island of Murter. The eco patrol learned about the flora and fauna present on the island, about the threats to the island’s biodiversity and about the specific land and marine food chains and their fragility. During that time, volunteers Gosia and Sergio hid the tasks for Murter Eco-patrol team on the  Gradina hill.

At the beginning of  “treasure hunt” game, members of Eco-patrol were divided into red and blue teams. Teams started at the foot of a hill from different locations and treasure was hidden at the top of Gradina hill. Treasure hunt was not just race to top of the hill. They had to work as a team and solve a series of tasks related to biodiversity of Murter Island. The first task was to decode a massage to find a route direction. In the following task, teams had pictures of plants and animals species from land and sea and the task was to create two food chains. The last task was Word Search, in which teams had to create a pairs and each pair had to find five key words like: herbivore, carnivore, scavenger, endemic, plankton, nekton, benthos etc. Both teams solved their tasks successfully and blue team was first to get to the top of the hill. As a reward, “treasure hunt” members got cloth bags. At the end of activity members took part in the game “Toaster, elephant & James Bond.”

In this “treasure hunt” game the winners were both teams, because they spent a sunny day outside, learnt about the biodiversity of Murter Island and had a great time.

Next Saturday the members of the Murter eco patrol will be enjoying their well-deserved holidays and in two weeks’ time, they will be taking part in a real treasure hunt, which will be held in another location.