Watamu Sea Turtle Volunteer Project, Kenya

The project team work hard to protect turtles and the local marine environment through a variety of programmes, whilst ensuring volunteers get hands on experience in all areas of interest. I felt like part of the team making a positive impact and learned so much about the threats to turtles. My favourite was the rescue and release programme; medically assessing turtles before releasing the healthy ones into the marine protected park. I also got to experience and help with some truly magical moments – a turtle mama nesting and hatchlings making their way to the ocean

I wanted to drop you a quick note to thank you for facilitating the 2 weeks that Julia and I spent in Watamu, during our recent trip to Kenya.

We both had a fabulous time at the project, a magical 2 weeks where we both felt fully involved in the program, unlike some volunteer projects where one can feel a bit of a spare part.

The project partner is a tremendous organisation carrying out great work, with a wonderful set of truly dedicated staff, they are immensely well organised, can’t really praise them all enough!

We were made to feel so welcome as soon as we arrived and went straight into action, off for a turtle rescue with Fikiri. This involved picking up the turtle from a fisherman in a local village and after taking its vital statistics driving it off to a different beach to be released. It’s so rewarding watching the turtles as they get near the sea, start waving their flippers and then when they are put on the sand heading off to the sea, and once they are in, disappearing at full-speed in seconds. Within days of arriving my son and I were fully involved in taking turtle measurements, tagging and samples. The staff have a way of making you feel so much a part of the team right from the start. Lunches were fun, hearty meals with conversations in both Swahili and English. We really enjoyed the mangrove swamp patrols, wading through the water and feeling like early explorers. The poaching patrols on the beach were heartening in that we didn’t find much evidence of poaching but got to walk on the most beautiful beaches. A truly enjoyable experience and one I’d love to go back to and do some more.

The sea turtles project in Watamu has been an incredible experience!
The staff was very professional and kind. We’ve learned a lot of things about the environment and about the turtles. We’ve done a lot of different activities like saving turtles of course, but also mangrove potting, beach assessment, schools visits, anti-poaching patrol, night patrol, looking for turtles nests and protecting them. So it was really two amazing weeks!

The time in Watamu was incredible! Couldn’t have been better; The accommodation, the people I was able to work with and all the amazing projects I got to be a part of. I will definitely go back some time to work with them again. I have nothing bad to say really, and I can absolutely recommend this project for other volunteers!

It was an amazing experience, that has changed what I want to do when I graduate from university. It was so rewarding giving my time and seeing the differences that were being made. The work that the staff are doing is amazing, and it shows that they enjoy the work that they do. I particularly enjoyed working with Fikiri and Kahindi. Both of them are self-taught and not only took the time to talk to you about the turtles and let you get involved but they also took the time to talk about life in Kenya.

The staff were amazing and from day one I was involved with all of the tasks including; looking after the sick turtles in the rehabilitation centre, feeding them and applying medication, going out on rescues in Watamu as well as some further afield, educating children and adults that visited the rehabilitation centre, doing night patrols for nesting turtles and hatching nests, nest relocation, beach surveys and even doing a dissection of a turtle that unfortunately passed away.

I experienced things that are once in a lifetime everyday which was truly extraordinary and I hope to return again next year to see how all of the turtles are doing although a lot of them have been released back into the wild now already, which is amazing and feels great to have had a part in their recovery.

My favourite part was seeing the nests hatch and the young hatchlings running down the beach. We had to build runways to aid them into the sea, as well as returning 4 days after the hatch to do a nest excavation to calculate the nest success. It was amazing when there were still some hatchlings in the nest as they would have died without us helping them out.

I met some truly amazing people that I will keep in touch with. The other volunteers were all just as hard working and came from a variety of backgrounds so was a good experience to meet them too. The accommodation was by far the best volunteer accommodation I have ever seen as well and the two cooks were lovely. Each day they prepared lunch for all of us and the entire staff sat and ate together which meant me we picked up on a lot of Swahili and got to eat local foods.

An amazing experience that I would recommend to anyone looking for something life changing.