Diciembre

Greetings Akazulers!

Afraid blog posts have been few and far between this season – we have concentrated on getting the most up to date news up on the Facebook site. However, we will still endeavour to post more in depth info up on the blog site as and when it arises. So the 2012 nesting season is almost coming to an end, with just over a month until the project finishes up and everyone takes a well deserved break.

Volunteer wise we were fairly thin on the ground mid way through the season during the busiest part of the nesting season. The guys have had to work double hard to make patrols happen and to ensure crawl counts happen every day- but somehow they did it! This year’s volunteer co-ordinator Tom has been a huge asset to the project and without him we wouldn’t have achieved half as much this season. We hope that La Barrona has cast its spell and we’ll be working with him again in the not too distant future!

Some of this season's volunteers

SWOT fund up date

As some of you will remember, in 2011 we were awarded a much needed small grant from SWOT to help Akazul develop a sea turtle education centre. The education display was completed early 2012, and consists of life size turtle models and information boards. The centre has provided us with a useful tool to deliver an extensive sea turtle education curriculum to local children and adults which has proved to be a hit! A big thank you again to SWOT for awarding us the grant and we hope to work with you again in the future! To see the end of year report click here.

Sarah teaching in the SWOT funded education centre

Local children participating in education activities at the centre

National Aquarium Ltd Funding

Some more great funding news from the Akazul camp...  Last month we were awarded a small grant by National Aquarium Limited, a sister charity to the National Marine Aquarium (Plymouth, Devon, UK) to carry out a project titled "Community based sea turtle conservation activities on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, Central America".The project follows the theme of conservation through engagement and will commence mid December 2012 to December 2013. The funding will allow us to provide two funded internships to the most promising members from the sea turtle stewardship program. Internships will provide these individuals with the opportunity to work full time with Akazul on the sea turtle project as Research Assistants where they will receive full training, and gain experience, in data collection, research techniques, hatchery management, project management skills, IT, and English language as well as assisting with Akazul’s environmental education program which will focus on marine pollution. Many thanks to NAL for giving us this amazing opportunity! Watch this space to see how the project unfolds!

Melvin- one of the sea turtle stewards teaching local children

Annual Sea Turtle Festival

Preparations for La Barrona's annual sea turtle festival are well under way and volunteers have been busy helping get ready for the turtle madness that is about to descend on the village! This year the young Akazul football team will be involved in organising the kid's activities and will be playing a greater part in the festival, passing on what they have learnt over the last 12 months. The festival will follow a similar program to last year and will include: educational talks, games, art activities, films, and a football tournament.

Volunteers making preparations for the festival

That's about for now- we'll post again first thing in the New Year to announce the NAL interns and report the 2012 nesting results.

We wish you all a Feliz Navidad and look forward to the New Year!

Akazul xxx