The turtle season is upon us!

Hey there fellow turtle huggers!

Hope that this finds you all well…

After some difficult months in Guatemala we are happy to be writing nothing but good news on this month’s blog post.

Inauguration meeting forthe start of turtle season

Finally the turtles are here!! La Barrona has been graced with up to 9 turtles a night over the last week and the guys are cleaning up. We have tagged the first ever turtles in La Barrona and found a few nests already. A cracking start to what we are sure will be an amazing turtle season!

The new hatchery site

After losing the original hatchery to the big waves, a new site has been secured and eggs are being buried in a new hatchery. The tradition in Guatemala is to hold a hatchery inauguration at the beginning of each turtle season- ours was held in La Barrona last week with a really good turn out of locals. There was something for everyone; games, prizes, piñatas, food, some singing and by far the best part- local egg collectors have agreed to increase the number of eggs that they will donate per nest found! An amazing start!

La Barrona joining in with the turtle song

Our first UK volunteer Matt (far right on the photot) has come to the end of his stay in La Barrona- and we’d like to say a big thanks to him for all of his help over the last six weeks, and all the best with your final year at uni.

Equipo Akazul

We are still accepting volunteers for the 2010/2011 season- so for those of you that have some time and would like to help a good cause, please get in touch via the website.

Once again, thanks so much to everyone that has been supporting the project- it has been great to receive so much interest and kind words from people near and far. It makes all the difference.

We will write more news soon, so come back and visit us soon!

Saludos,

Equipo Akazul x

More rainy season madness...stay dry!

Hi all,

Hope that this finds you well…

Well this week we have some new logs to go in the "what happened to us in our first year of Akazul" diary... rainy season is well and truely here and has treated the guys to a mini cyclone which ripped the roof off a gas station! Keep reading for the rest...

In Guatemala we are still suffering from high seas and waves relentlessly pounding the coast. Many more houses have been claimed by the sea and sadly many of the families that have been affected are close friends of the project. From our side our loss has been minimal, but unfortunately the hatchery has been taken down. We are now in the process of desperately seeking an area of beach (that doesn’t cost a fortune) to construct a new hatchery for the beginning of the season as turtles are already starting to come up and time is running short. Despite all of this, I have faith that we will get there I the end and it will be a cracking season.

The hatchery perched on a cliff about to fall

Once again, a massive thanks to the hard work of the volunteers- they have been working solidly over the last month and we couldn’t have done it without them.

Algunos locos de Akazul!

Some important news regarding the recent strandings of olive ridleys… results from the histological samples came back from Hawaii, US last week but perhaps weren’t quite what any of us in Guatemala had hoped for. It seems that there were no common pathological denominators which could be held accountable for causing the turtles to strand. Results suggest that they quite simply starved to death. However, we will continue investigating this further- even if starvation was the cause there are still unanswered questions like how and why?

On a completely different note, we are in the process of building a new area to the website which will give supporters the opportunity to become members of Akazul and we will be selling beautiful Akazul tshirts...watch this space as we will let you know as soon as that part of the site is launched.

In the mean time as a wise man once said...."Stay dry"! and we wish you the best,

Akazul team