This website aims to link anybody with an interest in the marine turtles of North Cyprus with the people living and working with turtles in North Cyprus and the researchers who have been investigating these creatures since 1992.
Background of SPOT

SPOT was founded in the late 1980s by British expatriates Ian and Celia Bell who came together with Kutlay Keço, or Jimmy as he is fondly known to the regulars at the Grapevine restaurant in Kyrenia. In 1988 a preliminary field study was carried out by Brian Groombridge and Claire Whitmore and SPOT later made further surveys of the North Cyprus coast and found numbers of nesting green and loggerhead turtles sufficient to merit further investigation. In the early 1990s SPOT contacted Glasgow University and in 1992 the first pioneering team of students were sent to make a thorough survey. On the basis of this expedition, Kutlay agreed to provide accommodation on his land at Alagadi, and this became the Alagadi Goat Shed and Sleeping House, which twenty years on are still used by the Marine Turtle Conservation Project (MTCP) as the hub of research and conservation of turtles in North Cyprus.