turtle hospital

Turtle Hospital

Under the auspices of Pamukkale University, the turtle hospital has been in operation since 2008 and a team of international volunteers is on hand to explain its work to visitors. A little way away from it, a wooden hut astride a pine-covered hillside tells another story — that of June Haimoff, aka Kaptan June, the British woman who, back in the 1980s, took on the task of saving İztuzu Beach from the sort of mass tourism development that would have threatened not just its peerless beauty but also the lives of the Caretta caretta (loggerhead) turtles for whom this is one of the last nesting places in the Mediterranean.

Every May and June the giant female turtles drag themselves ashore during the night and use their back flippers to dig nests in the sand — into which they drop their ping-pong-ball-shaped eggs. Then, between July and September, they hatch, the temperature of the nests dictating the gender of the hatchlings. Once hatched, the baby turtles make their way towards the sea, drawn by the shimmer of the moon on its surface. Had the planned hotel development gone ahead, the fear was that many of them would have headed up the beach towards its lights and so would not have survived.

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