Hi there! My name is Sylvia and I am a Green Turtle here to tell you a little about what the volunteers at ASTOP in the village of Parismina do.

Me and the turtle community are thrilled that people come to help save us from extinction but we are not sure about some of their methods. For instance they seem to water plants all day, clear rubbish from the beach and sit indoors planning English lessons??!! As a turtle I dont believe that I need to learn English!! We do like how some of them seem to walk the beach at night to protect our nests, ward off horrible poachers and relocate our eggs to a safer location. However, some of the guides smell so bad of alcohol we dont even come out of the water, and as for the "safer location", they bury all the eggs next to each other in a hatchery and then dont even bother to guard it.

We do enjoy when some volunteers treat the programme as a holiday! One week, this great looking couple went horse riding on the beach, sport fishing for Tarpon and Jack (they caught these dumb fish, I mean who bites a hook?!!!) and ate three or four times a day while staying at the Ponce Palace in the village. Not exactly volunteering! We forgave them though as they were only people to do night patrol every day and who were actually interested in our survival.

Anyways, see you later and if you want to know I am 120 years old, 100cm tall and 100cm wide, weighing a healthy 135kg. So far I have nested two times this season laying over 90 eggs each time, I think I can manage another couple of nestings in the next few weeks seeing as I have been feeding up for several years and have swam all this way to the iron rich sands. So long as the poachers dont get me anway.