Wildlife experts voiced relief on Tuesday that 50 000 Olive Ridley turtles crawled up an eastern Indian beach this week to lay eggs, after the endangered animals missed nesting last year.
Turtle experts believe that widespread illegal fishing along the 480-kilometre coast of Orissa state, where three protected turtle nesting grounds lie, is responsible for the deaths of 100 000 Olive Ridleys in the past 10 years.
”This year, the activists … have already found dead bodies of 8 000 sea turtles in different beaches on the state’s coastline,” Biswajit Mohanty, coordinator of a turtle protection group, said on Tuesday.
Members of the group gathered at a beach near the mouth of the Rusikulya River on Sunday night hoping the turtles would come ashore after swimming and mating — and risking death — in the protected coastal waters since November. The turtles failed to nest on a large scale last spring.
”About 50 000 Olive Ridley sea turtles climbed ashore to lay their eggs on a one-kilometre stretch of beach,” Mohanty said.
”The mass nesting continued even during the morning hours and thousands of female turtles were seen laying their eggs up to 8 am.”
An Olive Ridley lays 120 to 150 eggs, from which hatchlings emerge after about 45-50 days. The eggs are often damaged by erosion or eaten by other animals such as wild boars, dogs and jackals.
The turtle experts plan to count the nests, turtles and hatchlings and help forest officials protect them. ”Studies have indicated that only one egg out of every 1 000
laid ultimately hatches and the hatchling survives to become an adult,” Mohanty said.
This year, ”news of the turtle nesting has come as a great relief to conservationists,” said Belinda Wright, project coordinator of the Wildlife Protection Society of India.
An estimated 160 000 Olive Ridley turtles had nested in 2001 at the Rusikulya site, a record since wildlife experts discovered it in 1994.
But the wildlife experts said there had been no mass nesting yet this year at the other major coastal sites, although groups of 100 to 300 turtles were coming ashore. For the past 20 years, trawler fishing has been illegal within 10 kilometres of the Orissa coast during turtle nesting season. But Mohanty and other wildlife experts say the trawlers continue to violate the law, although the state government says it has issued warning notices. – Sapa-AP