GVI.2014.

2

August 2014
Pez Maya
Busy times at the Turtle project in Pez Maya

Objectives
Monitoring nesting turtles during the night at San Juan Beach, relocating nests that are in dan-
ger of inundation, and cleaning the hatched nests.
Conducting weekly inspections and locating all the nests on Yuyum Beach to clean them when
the baby turtles have hatched.

Summary
The turtle project is very busy at the moment with lots of turtle nests in San Juan and Yuyum Beach-
es. Every night we have approximately 8 turtles in San Juan and most nights two or three hatching
nests. In Yuyum during the prospection we have 5 or 6 new nests and about 8 to 10 nests to clean
each week.

Report
Back in May, volunteers and staff adventured themselves into the night patrols to start the turtle
monitoring project in two beaches in the Sian Kaan Biosphere Reserve. Since then, the project has
been running with the number of turtle visits increasing. August has been a challenging month for
the turtle project, with many of our tur-
tle volunteers returning to their homes,
logistical challenges etc, and with a con-
tinuous high number of turtles coming
onto to the beach to nest we have had to
have great organization and team work
to get the job done. The diving staff and
diving volunteers have helped out great-
ly, with one diving staff member patrol-
ling ever night for a week to help out.
Then we were very lucky to have a great,
enthusiastic new Mexican volunteer who Figure 1 New volunteer Luis with Andrea and Fernando (di vi ng
staff).

GVI.2014.2
has thrived in the project and has been invaluable. On top of all this Flora Fauna y Cultura de Mxico
(FFyCM), our project partners, sent a very large group of helpers to help clean both San Juan and
Yuyum beaches so much work had to be done it lasted two days.

During August we had found 199 nests
of Chelonia mydas (Green turtle) and
68 of Caretta caretta (Loggerhead tur-
tle) in San Juan, but on the 29
th
August
when our partners helped out on a pro-
spection in San Juan we found 136 ex-
tra nests and we cleaned more than 20,
giving us a total of 403 nests in San
Juan.

After the San Juan prospection Flora
Fauna y Cultura de Mxico came back
to base to help us with Yuyum, finding 76 nests and cleaning more than 15. Adding this to the 33
nests of Chelonia mydas and 20 of Caretta caretta that had been found before, we now have 129
nests in Yuyum.
With turtle season about to finish, we
have had so far more than 2000 little
turtles in our two beaches and we
have a lot more waiting to be ready to
hatch in the next couple of months.

We are very excited to see the final
results of the season, and we feel very
lucky to be able to contribute towards
conserving the sea turtle species that
nest it the region.

To find out more about the turtle project in Pez Maya check out:
http://www.gvi.co.uk/programs/sea-turtle-conservation-mexico/
Figure 2 Ready to go to a pros pecti on i n San Juan beach wi th
our fellow turtlers from FFyCM
Figure 3 Cleani ng nests during Yuyum prospecti on