34. Saving Olive Ridley Turtle eggs

The last day in Chennai we spent looking for Olive Ridley Turtle eggs on the beach. It was one of the most memorable experiences of the trip. Imagine walking on the beach in the dead of night looking for turtle tracks in the sand which would lead to a turtle nest and a clutch of eggs.

It started with us registering through mail with a group called the STUDENTS SEA TURTLE CONSERVATION NETWORK(SSTCN) (sstcnchennai@gmail.com ) who has been walking the beaches of Chennai every day during the Turtle nesting season, since 1987. They locate nests, dig out the eggs and relocate them to a safe hatchery. They dig holes of similar dimensions in the hatchery and put the eggs in them to hatch in due course. On weekends they let people like us join them on the walks.

So late at night, not without some trepidation and excitement we reached at 10pm, (a whole hour early) the meeting point on Elliot’s Beach, to walk some 8 km through the night, up to Besant Nagar Beach. We watched a red coloured, rugby ball shaped moon rise over the sea, making the sea water shimmer tantalizingly in the dark. While we were busy clicking pictures of the moon a group of students saw a turtle waddle off to the sea after laying her eggs.

The ominously red moon, hope it bodes well for the endangered ridley turtles

We were pleasantly surprised to meet Suresh, who was with us on the birding trip to Masinagudi. Such surprises make me believe in Synchronicity and that nothing is random in the Universe. 

Friends on a boat

 

THE QUESTION ANSWER SESSION :The organisers came promptly at 11 pm and took an hour’s session familiarising us with their work and mission. The Olive Ridley turtles nest on these beaches during the months of December to April after which they just swim away leaving the eggs to hatch on their own in about 45 days. A good percentage of the eggs hatch but the hatchlings are conditioned to make a beeline for the water which is generally lighter than land. Unfortunately, the city is so near the beach and the surrounding area so lit up that the hatchlings get confused and move towards the city instead! Their plight thereafter can well be understood. So these good Samaritans have taken it upon themselves to relocate the eggs to a safer place and monitor them till they hatch and the hatchlings safely make their way to the sea. 

 

THE WALK :As some students had already seen a turtle, we could see the first nest and a clutch of over 100 eggs immediately, greatly raising our enthusiasm.

The turtle's flipper marks in the sand which led us to the nest

Anu couldn't switch on the flash and produced a sharper picture in the torchlight

Digging the nest

The first few eggs

Rajeev gingerly holding the soft, freshly laid egg. It will harden after a few hours.

The nest and the probing rod

Recording the dimensions of the nest for replication in the conservation hatchery

A bagful of turtle eggs! Worth its weight in gold

 

The hatchery

Making similar nests in the hatchery

 

A just emerged hatchling being given to us to release in the sea - oh! the excitement.

Being guided to the sea.The hatchling tried to come towards the torchlight rather than swim towards the sea.

We found three nests during the night. One of the turtles had a missing flipper which our experts could identify from the tracks in the sand.

The stray dogs could be a threat to the eggs and followed us all the way. Here they are pretending to be guarding them!

Hermit crabs were scooting everywhere.But the bottles recklessly thrown on the beach were more scary.

Lepidochelys Olivacea :The smallest of the sea turtles, the Olive Ridley turtle (Lepidochelys Olivacea) is so called because of its olive green shell but why ridley? is a riddle.  They measure around two and a half feet in length and breadth and are by and large carnivores. Satellite tagging has shown that these turtles travel through the warm and tropical waters to all parts of the world. During the nesting period a female can lay anywhere between 50 to about 200 eggs one to three times. An interesting aspect of the hatching is that the sex of the hatchling will be determined by the temperature of the nest. It would be interesting if researchers could find out if the mother turtle plays any conscious role in determining the sex of her hatchlings!  

ARRIBADAS :Before going for this walk I had heard of mass hatching of Olives on the shores of Odisha. It was a revelation to me that the same turtles do group nesting (called arribadas) on the shores of Odisha in thousands but in single nests in Chennai. The sites popular with the turtles for synchronised mass nesting being  the mouth of the Rushikulya river and Gahirmatha beach in Odisha. It is apparently a survival technique – safety lies in numbers. I was shocked to learn that the survival of a hatchling and reaching adulthood is 1 is to 1000 and we all wondered if the tyke we released would be the one to survive; our collective good wishes were with it. The Olive Ridley turtles are considered endangered because their nesting sites have gone down greatly in numbers.

THE THREAT :Apart from the dwindling nesting sites there are other threats to the Olive Ridley Turtles. Egg harvesting apart from killing the adults for food, oil, leather and making fertilizer have all contributed to their numbers going down. In India thankfully it is believed that Vishnu took the shape of a giant turtle (Kurma) in his second avatar. The local fishing communities of Odisha worship the turtle as a god (may Kurma bless them!) and therefore they help in their conservation.

On the T-shirt of a volunteer