MY SECOND „TARTARUGA “MONTH.

Ciao a tutti!
My second month in magical Italy has already passed! This month was educational, active
and fun! We studied all of what Ieranto Bay has to offer, kayaking, snorkeling… We learned
how to monitor boats and people, what information to give at the info point in this special
place. Ieranto bay is a marine protected area where Posedonia oceanica is found. Marine
endemic Mediterranean species that provides oxygen, is a hiding place for many organisms,
protects the coast from erosion…but it is extremely endangered so we must prevent
anchoring. An interesting fact is that it grows only 1 cm per year! It is very important to
monitor this because then we have information on how many people are familiar with the
place, how many do not know that it is a protected area and why, and that at the end of the
year we have collected all the data that we will use for the report.
Every 10 days, two people went to Cilento, a geographical region of Campania, where there
are large and beautiful sandy beaches. There we sleep in tents at the Palinuro beach
campsite. Why? We monitor turtles! I went for the third week and I can say that it was the
experience of a lifetime! There we are greeted by Erica, a girl who volunteered 3 years ago
on the same project, and other volunteers from the Caretta Invista project. The working day
starts at 5 am, we work until approximately 7 or 8 am. We are looking for turtle tracks and
nests. If we don’t find a nest, we go to sleep and later the day is free. When a nest is found,
we stay next to the tracks and the nest, we make sure to take pictures and call the girls from
the Caretta Invista with whom Project Mare cooperates. In order to touch the nest and eggs,
you need a permit. If the nest is too close to the sea, the eggs can be destroyed and then a
qualified person is needed who can move them to a better position. Care should be taken to
ensure that each egg is in the same place where the mother turtle dropped them, and of
course at the same depth. One egg is always taken for genetic analysis. I had the opportunity
to attend that event twice in 10 days! When the turtule is looking for a place to lay her eggs,
it can take a long time and she can go to different beaches more than once. While Pedro, my
colleague from Portugal, and I were in Cilento on June 24. we received a call around 2 pm
that a turtle was seen on the beach nearby! It’s very strange because it’s too hot for them to
come out. When such a rare message is received, you get ready in a second and just run, first
to the van and then to the beach. When we arrived, we saw traces that indicated that she
didn’t like the beach, probably because of too many stones, so we took measurements of
the traces and decided to hand out flyers to nearby beach bars, if they see her, they should
us. Around 6 pm we received another report. The turtle came out again on Penelope beach,
very close to the first beach. Eric, Pedro, Giorgia and I ran as fast as we could! There we had
the chance to see a turtle coming out of the water and looking for its place to lay. There, our
job was to keep people at least 5 meters away from the turtle, so that they do not cross the