Cohabitation

Patara, September 2024.

Some public spaces are saturated with inscriptions, others, including beaches, are more preserved; advertising and signage are kept to a minimum. On this beach on the Lycean coast, bathers discover an additional number of inscriptions. They are warned as soon as they leave the dunes that two species of sea turtle come to lay their eggs under the sand, so they must adopt a certain number of rules of cohabitation: prevent children (and adults) from digging to avoid unearthing the eggs, leave before nightfall so as not to disturb them and, if necessary, not to stand in their way or provoke any interaction. In addition to this fixed list of restrictions, in the early mornings volunteers place a mobile sign above the nests.
This sign updates the presence of the turtles and the associated prohibitions for bathers: it reminds us of the rules in situ. It also indicates the daily care given to protected species, and therefore both the temporality and the fragility of environmental public action. But it also instills a paranoid thought about the prerequisites of this cohabitation with a protected species: if the beach is filmed to spot egg-laying sites, do the cameras also capture the daytime activities of bathers?