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MEDASSET (Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles)

Who are they?

MEDASSET, the Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles, is the only organisation working exclusively on the conservation of sea turtles throughout the Mediterranean Sea. An international non-governmental organisation (NGO) founded in the UK, in 1988, it was established as a Charitable Trust in 1993. It works closely with its sister NGO in Greece, which shares its name and principal objective but is a separate legal entity.

The aims of the organisation are to conserve and protect the remaining Mediterranean Sea Turtle populations and their Marine Ecosystems, through scientific research programmes (both coastal and off-shore), education, political liaison, publicity and fund-raising. MEDASSET endeavours to bring together other NGOs, inter-governmental organisations and universities for international co-operation.

In 1997, MEDASSET in collaboration with the Naples Stazione Zoologica, "Anton Dohrn", released "Paola" (an incidentally caught turtle, rehabilitated and fitted with a satellite transmitter) from the Greek island of Kefalonia. A month after her release "Paola" was caught in the nets of a Greek fisherman who cut her free. "Paola" became an international celebrity, and in 1999, featured in a GPI exhibition at the National Science Museum in London.

Summer 1999 will follow on line through "EuroTurtle", in collaboration with Marine Turtle Research Group of the University of Wales, and the British Chelonia Group, the satellite tracking of a transmitter equipped green turtle released from the beaches of Cyprus, where MEDASSET has supported research work since 1993. The mystery of the turtles life has long puzzled biologists; many questions still remain about the lives of these strange, charismatic and vulnerable creatures:


Where do they go to when they disappear into the sea after nesting?
Where do they feed?
Little is known for certain about the lost 10 to 15 years during which time the hatchling loggerheads are believed to drift sheltered by rafts of floating seaweed. There are stories of vast rafts of juvenile sea turtles drifting in the Bay of Bengal, off India.

Sea turtles are known from the results of tagging to travel large distances, crossing both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Tagging however depends largely on chance encounters with tagged turtles. Satellite tracking aims to reveal more about the movement of turtles as they go about their daily lives, in order to make their protection more effective.

How are they involved?

MEDDASET have provided valuable funding for the MTRG's sea turtle tracking programme.