Tag: work

Turtle season

Highlights, Mysteries & First Times – What happened in 2024

Daniela

It has been few weeks only since we shut down the 2024/25 MEMANTA season. So it is time to tell you guys about all the amazing things that have happened.
I can certainly say that this has been our most successful and most expensive sea turtle season so far. Details will follow shortly…

Buckle up, grab your drink, lean back and keep reading… 📖

A new Hatchery… again

Once again it was time to expand our hatchery, even if it was just for a mere 2 metres. But we re-did the whole thing:
(1) We buried a black plastic fence around 40 cm deep all around the hatchery which is sturdier and more durable than the mesh,
(2) We renewed all the posts and even the wooden door as termites and rain had basically destroyed the former ones.

The new hatchery was built in mid July with the help of our first interns, Kim and Fiona from Luxembourg! These were our first guests ever from this small country and they were truly wonderful people who enjoyed themselves very much I think 🙂

Continue reading “Highlights, Mysteries & First Times – What happened in 2024” →
Turtle season

Happy lonely times

Daniela

Timing couldn’t have been more unfortunate when a global crisis halted international travel for many months to come, just about when we were opening our doors.

But I’m not going to cry to you about the severe state we’re all in – I’m here to tell you all the good news that happened this year. Because despite the pandemic, things were going great for us at MEMANTA as we simply kept doing what we love the most.

the dogs are checking out the lagoon
one of a trillion sunsets...

We collaborated with more people and protected more nests:

This year we collaborated with four young men from the community who would fill our hatchery with nests that weren’t safe on the beach. Those guys are good friends with Melvin and work regularly for us, so there’s a lot of trust involved. They would come up to our house, wake us up in the middle of the night and help to rebury the eggs. However, we also received some nests from random people from the community, which made us especially happy because it shows that there are quite a few guys out there who want to support us.

eggs put nicely into a hand-dug nest
human & turtle tracks

All in all, we were able to relocate 70 nests during the 2020/2021 season! That’s a total of 7040 eggs – mostly from the Olive Ridley turtle, but also from the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill turtle. It’s a huge increase from last year with only 22 nests.

Continue reading “Happy lonely times” →
Preparation & Construction

Getting in shape

Daniela

Another four months have passed since we gave an update on our wonderful beachfront property and the start of the development efforts. We’re still kind of far from opening, but we’re slowly getting there….
You might wonder: “What’s taking so long?” until you understand the difficulties that come with our remote location and the advantages that come with a thoughtful approach. How many times have we changed and improved our designs until we found the perfect one? How many times have we discussed the same matter over and over again until we found an adequate solution? How many times did we have to accept failures, and take a new direction? How many times have we been waiting for information being passed on and materials being delivered? How many times did tools break down? How many times did we have to take an hour-long journey in order to buy one last missing piece?

 

Living in Venecia and being in a hurry are just two things that don’t match up. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Because sooner or later, people will come here in order to slow down, take a deep breath, reflect and revive. Continue reading “Getting in shape” →

Preparation & Construction

Living in a lonesome paradise

Daniela

Since our move to Venecia in December 2018, there has been a lot of stuff happening. We have been preparing for the construction of the project infrastructure, adapting to our new life in remoteness, planting a lot of trees, discovering some native animals during the dry season and saving our very first turtle nests. But just see for yourself!

 

New challenges

Following the big move to our house, there was still a lot of work to be done. We planted a good amount of fruit trees, set up some small irrigation systems, further deepened our well, built an artisanal biofilter to treat our sewage water, improved the fence all around the property and found a nice spot up on the trees where there’s some good internet connection 😉

Melvin getting started on the biofilter
biofilter: up and running
just look how our plants grow!
young bay laurel tree

Continue reading “Living in a lonesome paradise” →