Note: this research is done under research permit issued by the Ministry of Environment and Energy of Greece and is fully supervised.

Sea turtle nesting started more than a month ago, and we've already placed 16 temperature loggers to record temperature every 10 minutes at the center of a selection of nests.

The motivation behind this research is to investigate whether this population is affected with elevated temperatures caused by climate change. Elevated temperatures can heavily skew hatchling sex ratios to female and cause reduced fitness and therefore high mortality after hatching.

A sample of emerging hatchlings will be intercepted and tested for fitness. Crawling, righting, and swimming speeds will be compared to incubation temperatures. Similar research has been done before, but the logger's low cost allows a much larger sample, while its extendability opens options to control nest incubation temperature at their natural location.