The Hindu : Safeguarding Olive Ridley along Tamil Nadu coast

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 16, 2003

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Safeguarding Olive Ridley along Tamil Nadu coast

By Our Staff Correspondent

NEW DELHI MAY 15. While all attention on the need for preservation of rare Olive Ridley turtle is hogged by Orissa, which is a major nesting ground for sea turtles, the sporadic nesting beaches of these turtles in Chennai have gone unnoticed. The region has shown a drastic decline in the nesting population due to urbanisation, predation of eggs and hatchlings by dogs, crows and poaching by man.

It is in this context that TREE (Trust for Environment Education) initiated its sea turtle conservation programme on the Chennai coast. Its mission is to foster symbiotic and harmonious existence between nature and man with the target being the fishing communities along the east coast on the Bay of Bengal to Marakanam in Chengalpet district of Tamil Nadu, covering about 30 villages.

A member of the Roots and Shoots International Network, TREE started its first campaign to conserve and protect Olive Ridley turtle along the east coast, specifically from Neelankarai fishing village to Injambakkam and Panayur fishing villages. A few young men from the identified villages were grouped, who called themselves "Kadal Aamai Padhjukavallargal'' (KAP or Sea Turtle Protection Force). Trained to patrol the beaches of their villages to keep track of the turtles nesting sites during the nesting season between October and March, the groups were initially disappointed on seeing the number of dead turtles in the initial couple of months which stood at 14 and 10 at Neelangarai and Injambakkam in December 2002.

But the group sighted its first nesting turtle on January 22, 2003 following which enclosures was erected on the nest site to provide safety to the eggs. Relocation of eggs was not encouraged unless these were in a danger.

Besides these, 17 more nesting sites were located by KAP members during this season. The areas were not cordoned off but the location identified and recorded in a logbook maintained by the members to keep a track of the arrivals of hatchlings. The first batch of hatchlings moved towards the sea on February 1, this year.

This is the first effort towards involving the local fishing community youth for the conservation of the Ridley turtles on this coast, claims Supraja Dharani, chairperson of TREE. The organisation hopes that this effort would help reverse bleak situation of these endangered turtles as well as to restore the ecological balance and promote harmonious co-existence with nature.

The earliest reports of marine turtles in Tamil Nadu in southern India are found in Tamil Sangam literature (fourth century A.D.) from a poem which describes a nesting turtle. Principal nesting areas include the Madras coast, Point Calimere and Nagapattinam and Mandapam in southern Tamil Nadu. In northern Tamil Nadu, nesting occurs primarily along a 50 km stretch from the Adyar river to Kalpakkam. The first survey of sandy beaches north of the Adyar river was conducted from 1973 to 1974 when 40 depredated nests were found on a single night during the peak season, 17 dead turtles were also found during the survey, according to Kartik Shanker of the Centre for Herpetology and Madras Crocodile Bank Trust.

In a report on "Thirty years of sea turtle conservation on the Madras coast: a review'', Mr. Shanker says the Madras Snake Park Trust maintained a hatchery for four years between 1974-1979 when 197 nests were collected in the region.

In 1977, the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute also got involved in the programme and collected 14,546 eggs from 125 nests. From 1978 to 1983, between 72-309 nests were collected while the World Wildlife Fund (Tamil Nadu branch) collected 44 nests in 1982. The Tamil Nadu Forest Department took over the egg-collection and hatchery management programmes in 1982-83 and established five hatcheries in the State.

"While the long-term conservation programme may have prevented a drastic decline so far, the intensity of threats may have increased with the main threat to adult sea turtles being mortality apart from depredation of eggs by human and animals, poaching by fishermen and lighting up of the beach by the increasing residential colonies,'' Mr. Shanker points out in his report.

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