Creating personalised engagement with sea turtle conservation on Zakynthos Island, Greece

23 January 2025

Laganas Bay, Zakynthos Island, Greece, hosts one of the most important Mediterranean loggerhead sea turtle populations. Zakynthos is also a mass tourism destination (more than one million visitors in 2024), with sea turtle viewing being a highly popular activity, which nevertheless generates huge pressure on some of these animals (stress and boat collisions). Sea turtle-watching activities were initiated as an alternative source of income to water sports for the local community in Laganas Bay in the mid-1990s. This is a popular activity for the tourists who can see the turtles by organised boat tours, by snorkelling, swimming, and from pedalos, kayaks and private hired boats.

Previous research by Dr. Papafitsoros, has revealed that there is strong evidence for a very high risk of trauma or mortality especially to resident individuals due to this immense pressure as well as due to the frequent violation of the speed limit of 6 knots. Dr. Papafitsoros and his collaborators have further developed a social media-based model to measure the pressures of tourism on these loggerhead sea turtles, the central idea is that the more often an individual animal appears on social media, the more viewing pressure it is subjected to. One of the key research tools here is individual sea turtle photo-identification (photo-ID): Every sea turtle has a permanent and unique facial scale pattern and thus it can be recognised from images such us those that tourists upload on social media! Thus, through the use of photo-ID the viewing pressure can be measured to the level of individual turtles. The photo-ID programme of the loggerhead sea turtles of Zakynthos is (probably ) the oldest sea turtle photo-ID programme in the world (spanning 25 years!), initiated by Dr. Gail Schofield in the early 00’s and currently managed by Dr. Papafitsoros. Through this, we now know a lot of things about the individual sea turtles of Zakynthos, from how long they have been visiting or residing on the island, to their behavioural habits, the threats they have faced (e.g. propeller injuries) and how intensively are observed by boats.

With the help of a 2023 QMUL Impact Acceleration Award, and together with two of the largest Mediter- ranean environmental NGOs (ARCHELON, the Sea Turtle Protection Society of Greece and MEDASSET, Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles), Dr. Papafitsoros and his team created the Zakynthos Turtles interactive web-platform. Through this platform, visitors upload images of unique turtles that they have observed for individual photo-ID and they receive in real time their unique stories along with additional photographs of them in a comprehensive email. Hence, instead of viewing “just another” turtle, they can perceive the turtle they saw as a unique individual and be more sensitised about their protection. The tour operators on the other hand, can use the platform to increase the conservation and turtle-friendly aspect of their ecotouristic product.

The platform has been overwhelmingly welcomed by both tourists and operators, as this is evidenced by their posts/comments on the project’s Facebook and Instagram accounts:

• “Absolutely incredible research you guys are doing. Lovely to had our turtles we saw in June identified as “Nikos” and “Geometry”. Absolutely love these beautiful animals and to know more info about them is amazing.”
• “It’s a great thing you are Our turtle from last year was identified as “Takis” :D. My daughter has just graduated in Marine Biology and she loves turtles so we will be following all the beautiful turtles.”
• “Your project is awesome! I have taken plenty of photos during my eight summer vacations and always thought I would return to them and try to identify the I even tried to take pictures of the numbers on their feet. I will upload my photos soon. Maybe I will fill some gaps in your database.”
• “An amazing project! Do become part of this wonderful achievement!” (Facebook post by Nefis Travel Zakynthos, a major tour operator on the island)

After a successful first year in 2023, the project was presented to the sea turtle community at the 42nd International Sea Turtle Symposium (ISTS), Pattaya Thailand, March 2024. Dr. Papafitsoros presented a poster about the platform which can be found here. Additionally a half-day workshop “Photo-based sea turtle citizen science projects: From opportunistic data collection to creating impact” was coorganised together with TurtleSpot Taiwan. The workshop hosted 7 talks from the most active and influential sea turtle citizen science projects globally with key discussion points being the engagement of the public, optimal promotion and scaling- up strategies, and the creation and measurement of impact. The concept of the Zakynthos Turtles platform attracted the attention of the participants and the discussion that followed opened up new ideas about how to further achieve its potential.

Upon approaching the 2024 summer season, it was clear that there was plenty of room to increase the outreach of the project. Towards that, Dr. Papafitsoros received a 2024 QMUL Public Engagement Small Grant and he also secured additional support from the British Chelonia Group, a UK-based charity promoting and supporting turtle and tortoise research and conservation globally.

A visit to Zakynthos took place in June 2024, to liaise with tour operators, and provide them with the project’s leaflets and posters to be distributed during their turtle spotting trips. Both leaflets and posters included a QR code leading directly to the photo-submission page. By making the Zakynthos Turtles web- platform a component of their tour, operators were able to provide their clients with a highly interactive tool which disseminates in an accessible way the related scientific research about the individual sea turtles they observe. This will eventually upgrade their ecotouristic services and will let tourists know about the existence of the platform so they can also benefit from its features.

Additionally, Dr. Papafitsoros conducted a workshop at ARCHELON’s Zakynthos field station, which has been stationed at the island for more than 40 years now, conducting sea turtle monitoring and public awareness activities. The Zakynthos Turtles platform and the underlying research was presented to about 30 ARCHELON volunteers, who are performing public awareness activities in the island through hotel/boat presentations and information kiosks. Of note, Dr. Papafitsoros was himself a volunteer of ARCHELON in Zakynthos for 16 consecutive years since 2007. He has been regularly publishing his sea turtle research having ARCHELON as a second affiliation, empowering the organisation’s research profile to the public.

Finally, extensive promotions (social media advertisements) throughout the summer tourist season were made, via the existing social media pages of the project, (850 and 591 followers on Facebook and Instagram respectively as of January 2025). Overall, the 2024 summer season activities resulted to an impressive increase of the visitor’s engagement with the platform: During the 2024 summer season, 590 sea turtle photos were received, an increase of over 260%(!) compared to the inaugural year of the project in 2023. This resulted in 268 identified turtles whose unique stories were sent to the people who observed them. It is worth noting that some people from all age groups became particularly interested in the project, submitted multiple photos, becoming noticeably engaged with sea turtle research and conservation. Many of these are planning to visit Zakynthos again and expressed their interest in keeping on contributing and learning from the platform. Another interesting result, is that around half of the people who submitted to the platform and participated in some turtle spotting boat tour, expressed some disappointment regarding their experience, through a relevant entry box in the submission form (“Lots of boats circling the turtles. Not what I expected to see.”). These testimonials can be used in the future as a means of persuading all tour operators to adopt animal-friendly turtle-spotting practices, since this is clearly what their clients also want. On the other hand, a short feedback question at the end of the emails sent to the visitors who submitted a photo and got back the story of their turtle, revealed that for the vast majority, the involvement with the platform made them very much interested in the sea turtles of Zakynthos.

What’s next for 2025?

Tour operators and tourists continue to be enthusiastic about this project and the team plans to run the project in 2025 and in the years to come as well. A visit to Zakynthos is planned also for 2025 for further local promotion of the platform as well as for photo-ID data collection. Scientifically, a paper analysing all the social media and photo-ID data of the last six years, highlighting the pressure and the threats of individual turtles is planned for the coming months. Finally, Dr. Papafitsoros with his collaborators have been working on developing automated AI-based photo-identification methods whose incorporation will fully automatise the platform. Related to this and with the help of a new 2024 QMUL Public Engagement Large Grant, Dr. Papafitsoros will develop the Wildlife Photo-ID Game, an interactive, educational (and fun!) digital game around photo-ID of wild animals. The game will engage a variety of stakeholders like wildlife conservationists, enthusiasts, and ecotourists not only locally in Zakynthos but also globally. Stay tuned!

Dr. Kostas Papafitsoros

Email: k.papafitsoros@qmul.ac.uk

Centre for Probability, Statistics and Data Science School of Mathematical Sciences, QMUL