This time of year is breeding time for the Loggerhead turtles here on the Mediterranean beaches. After a struggling up the beach at night to dig a hole the female turtles lay their eggs in the sand and cover up the hole. They make an effort to dig the hole far enough away from the water for the sand to be dry and warm enough to incubate their eggs. In this picture you can see the tracks that the turtle made as she came and went, the eggs were laid where the two tracks met. I’m not sure which track is the coming and which the going one but they must have only been made a day or two before I saw them.
This is Rami on the beach at Demre, he is a research assistant and was going round measuring the temperature of each of the nests, there are ten on this beach. On the 7Km beach at Patara he said there are over one hundred nests.
The eggs take between forty and forty five days to hatch, I hope they are all successful and the babies can find their way to the sea for their epic journeys around the world’s oceans before they come back to breed here again. It was wonderful to see this activity that I had only ever seen on television before.
Cukurbagli's Blog 
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