By Isabel Mueller Eidhamar

It’s the middle of the night, its pitch black with only the sound of the tide creeping up onto the shore for company. The otherwise busy Alagadi Beach has been left to recover from another hot day filled with sunburned tourists rubbing sunscreen on their red noses and children building sandcastles in the sand. The locals have packed up their picnic gear, and the few stragglers who stay on past sunset for one last dip have finally cleared off.

20-year-old Jade Getliff has been in the dark on the beach for a few hours already, with the starry night sky as her sole light. She is one of the student volunteers from SPOT, The Society for Protection of Turtles, who is eagerly anticipating the first female turtle of the night to make her way up the beach to lay her eggs, with her nest being just one out of almost 1000 dug here on this ancient site each year.

It ́s close to 3am when a turtle finally appears on the horizon, only her silhouette visible as she starts to make her way out of the surf and up the beach. Jade has seen her now, and sits from afar observing her, not wanting to disturb. Every year hundreds of female turtles nest on Alagadi Beach in North Cyprus, and it has for hundreds of years remained one of the most important nesting beaches for the endangered Green and Loggerhead turtles in the world.

However this one turtle seem to take longer than usual to dig her egg chamber. Jade can vaguely make out the outline of the females’ flippers, and eventually realises that this turtle is only using her left-back flipper to dig in the sand, a clumsy and abnormal move. Having studied Marine Biology for a year already, Jade knows that female turtles require the strength of both back flippers to dig their egg chamber so that they can alternate between the two and save energy. She stars to get worried…what if something is wrong?

It ́s her first year as a volunteer in the turtle program, and Jade consults her project leader, Sophie Davies, terrified that moving up on the nesting turtle unknowingly will scare her. Sophie agrees, this is not normal, and Jade gets the green light to crawl up in the sand behind her. Then she sees it. Tightly wrapped around the turtle ́s right back flipper are strings of plastic fishing line. The line has only tangled itself tighter as the turtle has fought against it, leaving it buried deeply into her flipper. Through the turtle’s battle to get lose, the line has only tangled itself tighter, digging all the way down to the poor creature’s bone. Sophie and Jade desperately attempt to pin the animal down so they can help, but turtles are deceptively strong creatures, especially when frightened and in a state of shock. The two women find themselves clinging onto the animal with all their combined strength as it drags them down the beach towards the shore.

Jade is holding on and fighting to get the last pieces of line cut away, but the turtle is moving fast. Just as she reaches the water Jade falls back in the sand…but she has the fishing line knotted up in her hand. She did it!

Today a turtle lives to fight another day, because of Jades quick thinking and fast hands. Over a thousand turtles are killed every year after getting entangled in plastic rubbish, leading to choking, maiming and amputation. Others that survive are forced to drag discarded rubbish or debris with them. This female is one of the few lucky ones who has escaped the tragic destiny of so many marine creatures before her. Turtles, and all marine life for that matter, have found themselves entangled in an unwinnable war against the endless stream of plastic polluting our oceans.

Jade Getliff, grew up in Falmouth, and like many young adults, she was unsure what she wanted to do with her life. Throughout her entire education she was pushed towards a degree in Medicine, and spent hours volunteering in hospitals, GP surgeries and even French pharmacies… until she discovered she hated it. “I was lucky to have my epiphany when I did,” Jade writes on her personal blog Turtlediaries.co.uk. This change of heart resulted in a frantic last minute switch to pursue a degree in Marine biology. Growing up in Falmouth and spending every childhood holiday knee deep in Breton rock pools, she had developed a found love for the seas. “The day I found out I got into my first choice university (University of Exeter) to do my dream degree and get my foot in the marine-conservation-door was one of the best days of my now 2 decades on planet Earth,” she recalls.

It was also at Exeter University that Jade got involved with SPOT, a turtle conservation program in Northern Cyprus, which has had close links with the University since 1992. The project, which was founded in the late 1980s by British expatriates Celia and Ian Bell alongside local philanthropist Kutlay Keço, aims to protect and develop preliminary field study of the nesting of green and loggerhead turtles, and for about 2 months of the year students like Jade come down to the island to study and observe the animal, currently on the IUNC Red List of Threatened Species.

One of Jade’s tasks is to take data on all the nesting adults, give every female an ID and check all tags and microchips are in order so they can detect which females return to the beach in the future. “We also aim to minimize the total impact of predators in Northern Cyprus, because there are a lot of stray dogs and foxes that dig up the nests,” Jade says.

During the summer months Alagadi Beach is therefore covered in white metal cages, an easy spot for curious tourists. The volunteers are also responsible for the night shifts on the beach from 9pm to 5am to monitor the nesting females, and it was on one of these shifts Jade rescued the turtle entangled in plastic. “Of course, if we all go back to basics and become tent-dwelling hunter gatherers like my parents do in the warmer months, or relationship with plastic would be very different, but it’s unrealistic,” Jade writes on her blog. She recently took part in the initiative that saw Falmouth become the second town in Cornwall to earn plastic free coastline status by Surfers Against Sewage, a campaign that aims to reduce people’s consumption of single-use plastic, a main focus in the UK Governments recent ‘war against plastic’.

Environmental activists Greenpeace estimate that 12.7 million tonnes of plastic end up in our ocean every year. Most of the plastics in the ocean are single-use, making the oceans a plastic minefield for sealife. 90 per cent of the world’s marine plastic enters the ocean from ten key rivers, all of which are found in developing countries in Africa and Asia with massive populations alongside them, it is clear that education about the dangerous precautions of plastic pollution on marine life and the environment is crucial.

“I think despite the fact that there is huge amounts of plastic in the ocean already, the most important thing we need to do now is to prevent more from getting in before we think about the monumental task of picking it all up. Because there is no point in mopping up a leak before you turn the tap off,” Jade says, adding that even in the UK children need more education on single-use plastic, “I think it would be welcome to introduce education on environmental issues and recycling a bit stronger into the curriculum, in primary schools especially.”

British Scuba diver instructor and expat Jewells Hobbley is one of those attempting to take on this monumental task. She has witnessed through her own eyes the detrimental effects plastic pollution has had on Cypriot beaches for years, having lived and worked there for over a decade. When she teaches new students to dive, one of her key focuses is the responsibility we have when enjoying ocean life. On every dive she brings a bag clipped outside her wetsuit with a knife that allows her to cut and gather all loose plastic fish lines and floating plastic pieces to bring up to the surface and dispose correctly: “I personally explain during every course that it is the responsibility of every diver to help maintain the underwater environment,” she says, adding that she gives all her students a net bag to collect rubbish whilst enjoying the wonderful underwater world on their first pleasure dive.

The Cypriot coastline has been awarded more for its cleanliness and beaches per capita and coastline anywhere else in the world, but with more than 50,000 people visiting the island to dive every year, there is a massive responsibility to keep up the good work. Cyprus is the home of over 250 different fish species, alongside the endangered sea turtles.

“When scuba diving we are humbled every time we see amazing living creatures going about their life. Turtles nibbling grass along a sandy bottom, dolphins swimming amongst the divers showing off, whales just passing and an occasional nosy octopus are just some of the amazing experiences of the underwater world,” Jewells says reminiscing about her hundreds of adventures under the Cypriot sea.

However, on top of the plastic debris floating in with the current, Cyprus still has a massive problem with people leaving their rubbish on the beach, many of whom are locals. Jewells therefore decided to arrange beach cleans in addition to her efforts while diving, an initiative that has landed her articles in Cyprus Today.

“Beaches are vital for many reasons here in The Republic of Northern Cyprus. We have nesting turtles from May to September, and we must do all we can to protect their nesting areas, keeping the beach and the sea free from debris, which is harmful to all aquatic life,” she says, “secondly, what better way to spend time teaching the younger generation to use, enjoy and protect their heritage for many future generations by using the beach looking at fauna and flora, and also having fun and taking home any debris they come across?”

On Jewells first beach clean 12 people got together and picked up 46 black garbage bags of plastic weighing a total of 184kg. She has later engaged more people to partake, actively recruiting people through Facebook, having had a further five beach cleans take place. Their last beach clean saw 60 black garbage bags of plastic being picked up, weighing 276kg. On the beach they have found everything from food trays, toothbrushes, hairbrushes and plastic cutlery to bottle tops, syringes, medicine vials, shoes and foam products. These products alongside micro plastics and plastic bags are becoming some of the biggest threat to sea turtles, who often get entangled or mistake it for food. Despite Jewells and her dedicated team of volunteers’ valiant efforts, this barley even begins to scratch the surface of the millions of tonnes of plastic dumped into the ocean each year. Besides, with the biggest ocean garbage site in the world, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Gyre off the coast of California, now twice the size of Texas, many predict a bleak future for the world’s sea turtle population, not just those in the Mediterranean.

From one person who is as familiar with Cyprus’ beaches to another, Annette Broderick, knows the Cypriot nesting spots like the back of her hand. The Professor of Marine Conservation at Exeter University is one of the main reasons why SPOT has such close ties to the University, having spent many hours on Alagadi Beach while studying Zoology at Glasgow University in 1992. Annette was one of the first volunteers to go to North Cyprus to collect data on the island’s sea turtle population. Together with fellow alumni and now colleague, Professor Brendan Godley, she established a close-knit collaboration and long-term field-study between Exeter University and the Society for the Protection of Sea Turtles in Cyprus. She knows first-hand that the digesting of plastic items is a threat to Cypriot turtles having focused her research around the exploitation and status of marine vertebrate populations, turtles in particular.

“Juvenile turtles tend to be pelagic up to a certain point in their life, so all hatchlings of all species of turtles actually, leave the beach they hatch at and go out in the open ocean,” she explains, explaining that while floating around in the ocean jives the turtle will eat anything that fits in its mouth.

When the SPOT team released their latest sea turtle necropsy in March, where biopsy samples were gathered from the turtle’s tissues and the stomach contents were analysed, it was discovered that almost 100 per cent of green turtles had ingested plastic pieces. Having done a lot of her field research on Alagadi alongside SPOT, Annette has seen the devastating effect of plastic being mistaken for food by marine turtles. “We had a turtle that was remarkably still alive that washed that had tried to ingest a piece of plastic sheeting, and it was still in its mouth…but it was also coming out the other end,” she recalls, explaining how harrowing it was to see her favourite sea animal being brutally threaded on the plastic sheeting like a pearl on a string.

“It had tried to pass the entire piece of plastic through its entire guts!”

However, it is not just in the ocean sea turtles are being killed in the war against plastic. Just like Jewells, Annette also knows all too well how damaging plastic waste left on beaches can be to the local environment. Plastic is not just killing turtles in our oceans, but it is also killing them on their ancient nesting beaches. Annette once discovered a nest of hatchlings who had all suffocated after some plastic waste obstructed the exit of the nest, killing the baby turtles before they even had a chance to feel the ocean on their tiny fins.

“I think it’s about reaching the population, and investing in the governments to help them provide better facilities and supporting them to ensure that plastic pollution is important on their agenda too,” Annette says, “It is obviously in our own interest, because the marine environment is a shared environment. So we have to look after it collectively.”

If the sea turtle, who have roamed the Earth’s oceans for the last 100 million years, were to go extinct, there would be massive consequences. “It has certainly been shown where turtles’ are not present on reefs, coral reefs in particular, algae dominates and takes over.” Annette says.

The role of the sea turtle ranges from maintaining productive coral reef ecosystem, like Annette emphasizes, to transporting essential nutrients from the oceans to the beaches and coastal dunes. But due to the major changes occurring in the oceans and plastic threatening the populations, sea turtles have already been virtually eliminated from many areas of the globe.

However, since SPOT was established in Northern Cyprus, vital information has been gathered about the species, and green turtle numbers are finally increasing after having been the most critically endangered species of sea turtles on the island. The data gathered at Alagadi is giving people like Annette immensely valuable information that hopefully will propose a solution to the unfair race against time, a race that the turtle undoubtly will lose if current trends of plastic pollution continue.

Back on the beach Jade is preparing to release her first baby turtle into the ocean. The hatchlings that they excavated last night are finally ready to set out on their own big adventure, eagerly crawling on top of each other as the group of volunteers walk along the beach searching for the perfect release-spot. It’s a bittersweet moment for Jade as she holds the tiny wiggling Loggerhead hatchling up towards the moonlight for a better look. She knows that the chances of the tiny one surviving are depressingly small, with only one in a thousand making it to adulthood. She carefully lowers the hatchling towards the sand. It is so tiny that she can hold it firmly with just her thumb and index finger. “Goodbye little one, good luck on your journey,” she thinks to herself as she with one last breath releases the baby turtle into the sand, watching it clumsily shuffle it’s little flippers on its way towards a lifetime of adventure in the great unknown of the Mediterranean ocean. For all Jade knows the little one could end up in the Mexican Gulf by next year, and just as she releases herself from that thought, the little loggerhead turtle disappears in the ocean waves. Only time will tell if it will survive the onslaught of plastic polluting its oceans, reach adulthood and return to the place where it all started: to continue the life cycle and lay her own eggs like her mother did so many years before her on a silent night on Alagadi Beach in North Cyprus.