This year, ARCHELON has recorded a new nesting record: 6,700 Loggerhead nests in the core nesting area of Kyparissia Bay. This core coastal area is located between Arkadikos and Neda rivers, is 9.5 kilometers long and is entirely included in the Natura 2000 sites of the Peloponnese, with the code GR2550005. The exciting news is that this record is a confirmation of the significant upward trend in the annual number of nests gradually observed since 2006 in Kyparissia, and as such, it bears a significance different to the much smaller increase in the number of nests that was observed this year in Zakynthos and the rest of the nesting areas in Greece.

"ARCHELON's long-term records show a significant recovery of the sea turtle population in Kyparissia Bay, which was achieved after many years of hard work by thousands of volunteers. The survival of the Loggerhead in the Mediterranean in the coming decades is absolutely dependent on the continuation of theses conservation efforts" says Dr. Aliki Panagopoulou, ARCHELON's Research Coordinator.

ARCHELON's monitoring and conservation project for the reproductive activity of the Loggerhead sea turtle in Kyparissia Bay has been going on for 41 summers! Work is conducted by researchers and trained volunteers every year since 1984, just like in the respective monitoring project on Zakynthos. These two ongoing ARCHELON projects are the longest-running systematic nest monitoring projects for the species in the Mediterranean.

Why so many nests in Kyparissia Bay?

This year's record number of 6,700 nests in the area confirms the upward trend observed since 2006 and is a result of the long-term nest protection measures implemented by ARCHELON since 1992.

In the early 1980s, when the first researchers of ARCHELON visited the area, they found that too many nests were being destroyed by predation (mainly by foxes and stray dogs that ate the eggs and hatchlings) and by flooding from the sea (in cases where the nest is too close to the waves). To mitigate these threats, ARCHELON volunteers began implementing protection measures for all nests in 1992. These protection measures have led to a reduction in predation, from 50% to 13%, and flooding, from 25% to 9%. So, since 1992, the number of hatchlings reaching the sea began to increase every year.

Most of the hatchlings that managed to reach the sea in the following years did not survive against the many predators and adverse weather conditions. Those that managed to reach adulthood and escaped entanglements in fishing gear, collisions with speedboats or heavy plastic ingestion, started returning to the beach where they were born to reproduce. Analysis of ARCHELON's data from the long-term turtle tagging program show a gradual increase in the percentage of "young" turtles, i.e. female turtles observed to lay eggs for the first time.

In 2006 (i.e. 14 years after the start of nest protection in 1992), the upward trend in the nest numbers became very clear. TO be more exact, while in the period 1992-2005 the average number of nests in the core nesting area of the Bay was 552 nests per year, in the period 2006-2024 it almost quadrupled with an average of 2,145 nests per year. In recent years it has exceeded 3,000 and 4,000 nests/ year several times and in the summer of 2024 it even reached 6,700 nests!

Kyparissia Bay is now the nesting area with the largest breeding Loggerhead population in the Mediterranean. Rightfully so, this coastal zone was designated a Nature Protection Area by a Presidential Decree (PD) issued in October 2018 that imposes specific protection measures for the nesting sites and ecosystem protection.

"The recovery of the Loggerhead in Kyparissia Bay was achieved with the contribution of 2,000 volunteers over the years. Today, in the midst of the global climate crisis, many people, and especially young people, want to help and participate in efforts to protect nature and wildlife. With their help, ARCHELON continues its efforts to protect the Loggerhead's nesting areas, increasing the chances of survival for each turtle, but also contributing to conservation measures for their habitats. The call for researchers/volunteers who will be trained in nest monitoring and protection is already open and the preparation for the summer 2025 projects has well begun", says Daphne Mavrogiorgou, ARCHELON's Director.