June Haimoff first stumbled across a loggerhead turtle on Turkey’s southern coast more than 30 years ago. It was a chance encounter that changed her life and the future of the beach she was wandering along.
Haimoff in her hut at Iztuzu Beach.
Already beguiled by the 4 km (2.5 mile) stretch of sand, which forms a natural barrier between the Mediterranean Sea and the reed-lined freshwater inlets of the Dalyan river, she set up home there in the 1980s and soon fell in love with the turtles.
Three decades later the 95-year-old Englishwoman still has a shed overlooking Iztuzu beach, which she has campaigned to protect from developers and to preserve as a natural environment where the threatened turtles can breed.
A sea turtle lays her eggs at Iztuzu Beach.
“When I first saw a sea turtle laying eggs, I watched without moving. I remember tears in my eyes,” she said. “From that day I started to collect any kind of information about them that I could.”
In 1987, Haimoff and a group of friends fought successfully to block a hotel construction project which would have endangered the turtles’ breeding ground on the beach.
A tourist walks past sea turtle nests marked for protection at Iztuzu Beach.
Since then the beach has remained under protection. All construction is banned as well as artificial lighting at night, when holiday makers are kept away and the turtles come ashore to lay their eggs.
An injured sea turtle is examined by Sea Turtle Rescue Center officials.
After its conservation success, Iztuzu also became a regional focus for turtles, with the establishment 10 years ago of the Sea Turtle Rescue Center, which treats injured turtles from beaches across Turkey.
Professor Yakup Kaska puts a sea turtle back into her open-sea cage after a medical check.
The group’s president, Yakup Kaska, who first volunteered at Iztuzu in the early days of the conservation project, says the main threats the turtles face are getting struck by boat propellers, swallowing or getting tangled in fishing lines, and eating clear plastic items which they mistake for jellyfish.
Gallery
A sea turtle swims back to the sea following her release after treatment at the Sea Turtle Rescue Center.
People bathe in natural hot spring water near Dalyan.
Sea turtle eggs are counted by volunteers from the Sea Turtle Rescue Center.
Baby sea turtles crawl to the sea at Iztuzu Beach.
A baby sea turtle crawls to the sea at Iztuzu Beach.
A sea turtle under treatment swims in her tank at the Sea Turtle Rescue Center.
A fish is loaded into a tank from a fishgarth on the Dalyan River.
A sea turtle swims in the Dalyan river.
Sea Turtle Rescue Center officials inject beeswax to the shell of a sea turtle, injured by a propeller of a boat.
A sea turtle is given an injection at the Sea Turtle Rescue Center.
Sea turtle eggs which will be transferred to a safer part of the beach are seen in an open nest at Iztuzu Beach.
A sea turtle returns to the sea after laying eggs at Iztuzu Beach.
Local cruise boats carry tourists on the Dalyan river from Iztuzu Beach to Dalyan.
Haimoff, fondly known as “Captain June” because of her love of the sea, teaches visitors about those threats to the turtles, and trains her young students in environmental preservation.
“I’m a woman in love with the turtles,” she says.
Sea turtle eggs which will be transferred to a safer part of the beach.
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