Two steps forward and one back for Cyprus’ endangered turtles

Save for the soft glow cast from a waning moon in a sky perforated by thousands of stars, the beach is shrouded in darkness; the gentle undulating surf and sporadic puttering of small fishing craft lurking in the blackness provide the only sound off the quiet southern coast.

Close to the dunes, red tinted torchlight intermittently illuminates a patch of stony sand on which rests a small metal cage.

Beneath it, eight tiny heads, indistinct from dark grey pebbles, rest motionless as they take a first gulp of the clear night air.

Twenty minutes later, the diminutive loggerhead hatchlings summon the strength to begin their arduous journey from the nest over an obstacle strewn trail to the sea. It is the first of many challenges and few will survive to return to make their own nests here in years to come.

The incredible spectacle continues for most of the night under the watchful eyes of local volunteers, there to deter predators and to count each hatchling that successfully makes it into the water.

Physical intervention is discouraged although volunteers use torches at the water’s edge to mimic the now absent moonlight the newborn hatchlings are intuitively programmed to follow.

While little is known about the fifteen to thirty year period between a turtle’s birth and maturity, one factor is certain; survival of the Mediterranean’s green and loggerhead turtles remains critical.

Listed as an endangered species worldwide and protected under Cyprus law since 1971, the island’s turtle population encounters mixed fortunes.

It is estimated that just 600 female turtles are at large in the Mediterranean, putting them at a higher risk of extinction than their loggerhead brethren.

Competition with local fishermen over declining fish stocks, illegal nets and destruction of habitat are just a few of the challenges for both turtle species.

Despite conservation programs and the efforts of hundreds of volunteers, the turtle deaths continue; their perpetrators escaping both investigation and prosecution.

One of the major problems is that female turtles instinctively return to nest on, or close to, their ‘natal’ beach, the one on which they were born.

If disturbed, or unable to find a suitable nest site, she will dump her eggs at sea, endangering the survival of the local colony and shrinking the regional gene pool that is vital to maintaining healthy breeding adults in the future.

Once considered a delicacy, today it is the encroachment of tourism pushing some colonies to the brink of extinction.

Sadly for many resorts such as Ayia Napa, turtles are already a thing of the past.

Fortunately, for the time being at least, the turtle hatchery established in 1978 by Andreas Demetropoulos and his wife, Myroula Hadjichristophorou of the Fisheries Department, continues to thrive, reporting more than 200 nests this season.

Occupying a largely unspoilt area north-west of the island the seasonal station on the Lara-Toxeftra coastal region remains the most prolific nesting site for both turtle species.

Yet even this area is vulnerable; local demands to develop prime coastal land threatens these idyllic surroundings, perhaps by the time these hatchlings return, their natal nesting grounds may no longer exist.

Success at Lara has left many locals unaware of the small turtle colonies struggling to survive on Cyprus’ more developed coastline.

Several turtle conservation groups keep a watchful eye on the nesting grounds of a few resolute enclaves, including Episkopi Turtle Watch, one of three small groups dedicated to the conservation of turtles on largely undeveloped beaches within the Sovereign British Area (SBA) located to the west of Limassol.

Over the course of the nesting season, from late May to the end of August, Turtle Watch volunteers perform regular clean-up’s in addition to almost five hundred early morning beach walks covering the organisation’s four nesting beaches, which include the popular recreational beach at Curium.

With eighteen nests confirmed this season, and 446 hatchlings already safely over their first hurdle, these are minor victories in the long battle for the turtles’ continued existence on the southern coast.

Positive progress is too often marred by set-backs such as the death of five green turtles recently washed up on the Episkopi peninsula.

Autopsy attributed two of the fatalities to suffocation, a common phenomenon resulting from entrapment in fishing nets.

The other three were deliberately slaughtered by fishermen, the modus operandi to force a sharp object through their captured victims’ brains.

Combined with the sixteen deaths already reported this year off the Episkopi coast alone, and twenty-one in 2008, volunteers can do little but maintain their on-going vigils while continuing to campaign for greater public awareness and action from the authorities to give Cyprus’ turtles a fighting chance for survival.

The increasing annual death toll and recent deaths is a devastating blow for Episkopi Turtle Watch Co-ordinator Linda Stokes, a local diving instructor and formidable force behind the turtle conservation campaign.

She explains why the protection of turtles has wider implications for the region’s delicate ecological balance, “There’s a good solid reason why people should be bothered about the demise of the turtle population and that boils down to the fact that both the greens and loggerheads play a pretty vital role, particularly in the Mediterranean, in distributing nutrients and keeping the sea grass beds trimmed,” she says, “It’s these that provide a home for fish so if you lose them, then you have a problem; if you want healthy seas then it’s something you should be bothered about.”