Loggerhead Sea Turtle Protection Project in Fethiye

This is something from the last summer, when we went to Fethiye for holiday. Everything was great, but the most interesting part was conservation project that is based there. Its target to protect the hatchlings of loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) from moving in a wrong direction right after hatching. 

The Çalış beach in Fethiye is a nesting spot for these endangered species, but it's also a popular tourist destination with lots of cafes, shops and restaurants right along the seafront, which means lots of light and lots of potential danger for newly hatched turtles. The instinct tell them to move towards the sparkling light of the sea, which worked just fine in those day when the moonlit sea was the brightest thing in the vicinity of nests. 

Unfortunately, with all the lights on the shore, ancient instict doesn't help the hatchlings anymore. They often crawl in the opposite direction from the sea and die without water. 

The Sea Turtle Protection Project focuses on locating the turtle nests and putting protective barrier around them in order to intercept the hatchlings, collect them and put right into the sea. We often saw voluteers going with buckets along the beach late at night and checking the nests to see if there were some newcomers there. Also, there was an information desk with volunteers ready to answer your questions about turtles and the project. As far as I understood, it is tun by the Pamukkale University Sea Turtle Research Centre. Their website has some useful information, and on Dekamer facebook page you can find some old and recent photos. 

And this is our own small hatchling from Fethiye.

Horse Chamfron from Istanbul Military Museum

Well, what can I say? I actually had to google for the name of this thing. I saw it in the Istanbul Military Museum (Askeri Muzesi). It looked a bit out of place among all the swords, pistols, cannons and uniforms, and immediately attracts your attention. It's called chamfron, or faceplate, and cheek pieces, and it's a part of a horse armour used during the Ottoman period.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the little explanation plate that was right in front of the exhibit. For some reason I was positive that this was a part of a camel armour, but anatomy didn't seem to match, and all the search results bring only horse armour pictures. So, no, definitely not a camel armour. A quick research showed, though, that camels were actually used in the battlefield. Firstly, it made sense in the places where horses were less common and less accustomed to the evironment, such as deserts. Secondly, the camels' smell is repulsive to the horses, and the mere presence of large number of camels may be enough to confuse the enemy's cavalry. Neat.

The Istanbul Toy Museum and Titanic Teddy Bears

The Istanbul Toy Museum itself is pretty small and devilishly hard to find, but it's definitely worth visiting. If you are ever in Istanbul, make sure to drop by, preferably by taxi, because we spent, like, an hour searching for it. It's in a nice and quiet neighbourhood on the Asian side, and can be easily recognized by the gigantic giraffe right in front of the entrance. Anyway, it's small, but filled with all sorts of toys arranged into collections accoring to the topic or the era or the country they were manufactured in.

For example, antique Turkish puppets Karagöz and Hacivat.

Cowboys and Indians toys from America.

Aviation toys with tiny parachuters here and there.

Aquatic themed toys

     

I especially like the crafty metal whale here swallowing the smaller fish. 

And tons of space toys with a real feel of the era - note the Gagarin Time cover.

By the time you come up the tiny winding stairs to the third floor, you think that you've seen all the toys in the world and will never be interested in them ever again. And that's exactly the place where you find yourself face to face with the Teddy Bear room.

So, alright, teddy bears, most of them not as cuddly as the ones we are used to. That's alright. But then you see these two little numbers: black, wonky and grave.

These are the Titanic Teddy Bears, or the Mourning Teddy Bears, manufactured specifically to commemorate the Titanic disaster and to provide some sort of comfort to the families of those who didn't survive it. The original party consisted of only 600 bears, which I find quite strange compared with the number of mourning families. And, by the way, they are going to recreate them this year.