ARCHELON’s team was there to continue an exciting project funded by MAVA Foundation.

Satellite tags were deployed in 12 loggerhead turtles in order to investigate their movements at sea between each nesting effort as well as their movements after their nesting is completed for the season. Data from satellite tags are also expected to give us some indication about their migrations towards overwintering and foraging habitats. This knowledge will, in turn, be used to design better management strategies for their conservation and reduction of negative interaction with fisheries.

Kyparissia Bay, situated in western Peloponnese, hosts the second largest nesting population of loggerhead turtles in the Mediterranean Sea. The higher numbers of nests is found at the southern part of the Bay, in a 10-km long core nesting area. ARCHELON has been working in this area conducting a long-term loggerhead tagging project since 1982 and runs a monitoring program of nesting activity every year since 1984.

Besides tags, these 12 female sea turtles were also given names. Since there are five languages spoken in the countries of the MAVA project, we picked up names with a meaning from French, Arabic, Turkish, Albanian and Greek.

We used www.momjunction.com to select the names and their meanings.

So we are happy top present you with:

Francoise, the one with French roots Fernande, an adventurous traveler Amira, a born princess with a heart of gold Aisha, one with success, one who is living Ecrin, one who is a reward, a gift of God, Tulin, a circular band of light around the moon Seyyal, a traveler Ella, one beautiful fairy Etty, a star Irini, one for peace Isidora, a gift of Isis Zosime, one who is likely to survive

The movements of these 12 loggerhead sea turtles are now online and you can enjoy following them around in this link: https://bit.ly/2YpbnEU.