"Kookookachoo they find their way back to the big old blue"

After spending the day yesterday giving information to tourists and constantly saying 'wait until I show you our beautiful, graceful, female Aysegul' and then never finding which tank she was in, it suddenly hit me... she isn't here anymore! Just two days ago we released 4 of our sea turtles on Iztuzu beach (Aysegul, Hakan, Ossman, and Coban).
The day was a hectic blur, with the adrenaline pumping through my body hard and fast almost all day, and the centre was a flurry of people and activity. All four of our sea turtles were chosen to have satellite tags attached to them. This involved a lot of preparation and hard work. First of all we sanded the shell down to remove the top layer of dead shell to ensure maximum attachment of the tag and reduce the chances of it coming off any time soon due to the natural processs of the turtles shedding their shell for growth.
Once the shell is smooth and cleaned with acetone the sattelite housing is glued onto the carapace with a cemetey, gluey substance, it is then left to dry for an hour or so and then they are ready! Unfortunately, it seemed that Ossman did not like his new tag and turned his whole body over in the water 5 times! Not a good sign of things to come.
At this point in the day I almost had the shakes from nerves and adrenaline due to the fact that I would be in the water with these turtles trying to catch a glimpse of them swimming away to freedom! I would like to point out that I was not scared of these turtles, and was very excited to be given such a great opportunity.
By the afternoon several important people and journalists had arrived to film and record the day, this did unfortunately cause a lot more hassle than necessary on the beach when releasing the turtles. There was around 100 people there for the big event as well as all the journalists flashing away with their cameras completely surrounding the turtles and barely giving them space to breathe let alone get to the sea. This made it considerably difficult to try and follow any turtles out into the open sea when all I could see around me was legs and people shouting 'he went that way' 'no wait, there's one!' Nightmare! Unfortunately due to extremely poor visibility in the sea, rough water and the light slowly going we were lucky if we saw a turtle for just one second. After swimming out for 5 or 10 minutes and unsuccessfully finding any of the turtles we headed back to the beach. On the upside, none of them wanted to hang around and they were all eager to get away.

Perhaps next time a release would be much better done in the early hours of the morning when the sea is clear and calm and the early sun allows for better light levels, and when there is less people around to stress out the turtles. Because at the end of the day, as a volunteer I am not here for publicity or for 20 journalists, I am here (as well as all the other volunteers) to rehabilitate and protect the turtles and to make the process as stress free for them as possible. 

Whether I would call the day a success or not depends on how I look at it. In one sense it was a great success because all the turtles went straight out to sea and didn't seem to have any problems, on the other hand, too many people and too many cameras caused problems for the dive team when it came to making sure the turtles were all okay.

So, from 11 turtles down to 7, I find myself missing Aysegul rather a lot, but hope that she lives even longer with her beautiful shell still free from boat injuries and human destruction.

Next stop: Istanbul for a bit of culture and history!