Light pollution averts sea turtles from nesting on otherwise suitable beach locations and prevents emerging hatchlings from finding the sea and reaching the open ocean. It is a little-studied threat because of its technical complexity and the high cost and sensitivity of equipment. There is currently no standard for measuring light pollution, and no light pollution levels that are recognized as acceptable or known to cause harm to the sea turtle nesting process or emerging hatchlings. This makes control impossible in countries where preventative measures are ignored, such as Greece.
The goal of this project is to produce an open-source light pollution measuring device and accompanying software that will help reduce equipment costs and enable the wide-spread collection of comparable data.
The Light Pollution Meter (version) 3 incorporates lessons and improvements from prototypes that I've used to measure light pollution on sea turtle nesting beaches in Kefalonia, Greece.