Spare a thought for Olive Ridleys today

Khokon Das, in his early 20s, lives in Gahirmatha, Orissa, but comes to Kolkata once a month to meet his mother, a domestic help.

Khokon has been witnessing the gory sight of a mass of dead Olive Ridleys being washed ashore for as long as he can remember.

Wildlife Society of Orissa statistics say at least 10,000 were washed ashore along the Orissa coast in the last nesting season, from November 2008 to March 2009. “This is more or less the same number of deaths recorded in previous years,” the society’s secretary, Biswajit Mohanty, told DNA.

Olive Ridleys are the smallest and migratory kind among the seven types of sea turtles in the world. They visit India to breed, arriving in October and departing by May to the deeper waters of the Indian Ocean off the Sri Lanka coast. Their three nesting sites are all in Orissa — at Gahirmatha and the mouths of the Devi and Rushikulya rivers.

But, thanks to uncontrolled illegal fishing, the Olive Ridleys are a dying breed. Their three nesting locations are also under threat. The Dhamra sea port, coming up near Gahirmatha, environmentalists say, is only 12 km from the nesting beach at Nasi Island and the bright lights and sounds of the port could drive them away.

There has been no mass nesting at the Devi river mouth since the last seven years due to massive illegal fishing inside the turtle congregation area.

The nesting site at Rushikulya river is also under threat from two port projects — the Palur port coming up about 5 km north of the nesting beach, and the Gopalpur port, 12 km to its south, says Mohanty.

In the last 14 years, at least 1,40,000 dead turtles have been counted. The turtles cannot remain under water for over 45 minutes. They need to surface and breathe. But when entangled in trawler nets they are forced to remain under water for about three hours and die.

A Kolkata-based environmentalist says, “Strict patrolling is required along the 5-7km-long nesting beaches along Orissa’s 482-km coastline, The government also needs to stop building ports near the nesting beaches.”

Experts say even corporates should come forward to save the turtles. Shirt manufacturer Turtle, for instance, is raising awareness on the plight of the turtles.