Hope for the turtle soup.

Where is the daytime sun bathing on the beach, waiting for night, a unique natural spectacle: In Search of Northern Cyprus, together with animal researchers tourists fresh geschlüpften turtles to make them safely to the water to bring - their chances of survival are otherwise low.

 

Girne - From May to August of thousands of tourists to spend their nights in Cyprus air-conditioned hotel rooms. But there is also a daily handful of tourists who prefer the beach - they accompany conservationists who night after night, the beaches, especially in the north of the Mediterranean island guard. Because in this period, the loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) and the soup turtle (Chelonia mydas) have come to lay their eggs off.

While some tourists in the twilight with beach mats and picnic baskets on their night on the beach preparing a group students go, loaded with radio equipment and buckets. In geese march the group scans the 20-minute walk from the research station at the Alagadi Bay through the dunes. It lies east of the town of Girne, which many Cypriots also called Kyrenia. Flashlights are not allowed. "Fresh geschlüpfte turtles based on the moon, and with whose help find their way into the water," says Robin Snape, the project leader of the research, students from the University of Exeter Cornwall and the Humboldt-University Berlin.

In two buckets Snape bears the mini turtles, the students in the night from freshly collected geschlüpft have. On the beach arrived, he one of them gently on the wet sand on the bay Spülsam. The little turtle crawls into the water. The moon shines like a spotlight on the little star. A couple of rowing movements in the sand - and with the next wave swashes the little turtle to the sea and disappear in the protection of the night.

Driven by a little-researched navigation, begins its long journey to the parents to Tunisia, Egypt or Turkey.

"From 1000 eggs survived a single turtle," says Michéle Kohl. The 18-year-old makes an education in Leipzig on economic assistant for foreign languages. A friend who is studying Biology in Berlin, she has to Participate in the project in Northern Cyprus persuades. The two are among a group of 25 volunteers, the most beach-Alagadi protect the turtles.

Wire cages to protect the eggs

Northern Cyprus beaches are among the main breeding grounds of the loggerhead turtle in the Mediterranean Sea. Every year from late May to early August, the females in the dark from the sea, crawling on the beach, digging with her flippers shallow pits in the sand and lay their eggs from it. The incubation of the eggs does the sun. After 50 to 60 days the young hatch.

In order not to overlook the clutch, the students are running at night in ten-minute intervals along the bay. Each new nest to protect them with a wire cage. "So that no dogs or foxes to dig nests and eat eggs," explains Michele. "During the day, are the beaches for tourists so openly. We are then on holiday and to resolve," says Robin Snape. Even many locals, the threat to the turtles are not aware.

"Flop-flop" sandals make Michéle with which they stapft along the beach until they are under a wire cage geschlüpfte a freshly discovered turtle. They noted the birth of the baby time: 0.30 clock. "It is very exciting, the holiday to spend," she says. During the day she sleeps for the night to be fit.

A good year for the animals

Robin Snape finds that in 2008 a good year for turtles in Cyprus was. Some 600 nests were: 110 at Alagadi-beach, 70 Güzelyurt near the island in the west and 65 east of Girne. Approximately two thirds of the nests were situated on the only Wildeseln populated Karpaz peninsula in the northeast. "The turtles do not come more to the beaches in the south, which are packed with hotels and tourists."

Since 1992, there is the turtle project at Alagadi beach. Whether the work of the voluntary returns, researchers can not yet evaluate: It was too early to see results, because the reproduction of a turtle-generation lasts about 25 years. The information station of the environmentalists to visit about 20 tourists per day, almost every night and accompany some of them at the beach controls.

Once a week the students also open during daylight, a nest and weigh and measure the baby turtles in the eyes of dozens of curious - for it is then a kind of publicity, because the protection project is funded exclusively through donations.

Katja Mueller, dpa