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16 September 2019
WHILE most teens were attending festivals or lying on the beach this summer, Roedean pupil Rosie Jones was busy saving baby turtles.
The 17-year-old travelled to the Greek island of Kefalonia in August to work with the charity Wild Life Sense which is a sea turtle research and conservation organisation with a mission to protect endangered sea turtles and their natural habitats.
Rosie was able to fund her trip after winning her school’s Air, Land and Sea award for Year 12s. The awards are designed to support an activity or trip in the summer holidays between Years 12 and 13, which is focused on personal development and public benefit. In the past girls have used their prize to fund volunteering in Tanzanian and Costa Rican hospitals and working with whale and dolphin conservation in Tenerife.
Rosie said: “I loved my experience working with Wildlife Sense, as it was incredibly hands on. Each morning we would survey the local beaches, health checking and measuring the progress of the nests. But the highlight was doing “hatching rescue”, a night survey where we would sleep on the beaches and help ensure all hatchings made it safely into the sea and were not distracted by light pollution.
“As well as learning lots about the ‘caretta caretta’, which is what they call the loggerhead turtles, I also experienced the amazing Greek culture and made a fantastic group of friends, my fellow volunteers. This was an invaluable experience that I’ll never forget.”
The loggerhead sea turtle is the most common sea turtle species in the Mediterranean and nests on the sandy beaches of Greece. However, the species is threatened thanks to climate change, accidental capture in fishing nets and the loss of nesting beaches through light pollution and tourism.
