Can we leave the Olive ridley turtle nesting beaches alone?
Hundreds of thousands of Olive ridley turtles nest on beaches along India's eastern coast. They need a stretch of unhindered sand just once a year, but are facing multiple threats while nesting
The sound of the sea was music—rock music. Hum, roll, crash, cymbal, hum, roll. We were on the shore, just behind the surf, in complete darkness. When we started sand-walking, the moon had been a scythe in the sky, cutting the dark only a little. Now, the moon had set. The stars were out. I was walking blind.
My marine biologist friend said to me: Close your eyes/ press them with your hands for two minutes/ when you open them again/ you will be able to see in the dark. In that dreamscape, it sounded like a magical spell. I raised my grubby hands—brined in sea salt—to my suddenly tender eyes, carrying out the spell. Two minutes later, I could see. A little. There were two layers of waves in front of us, crashing majestically and noisily. Of all things to distinguish, they drew the eye the most. One was a higher line of waves, pushing out towards the beach with decisive force. The other was a smaller, gentler layer—frothy wedding cake tiers—which shattered into nothing on to the surf. Within the shades of black and grey, I realised the waves gave out a faint bio-luminescence, a touch of neon. And above them, I could pick out the Big Bear and the Orion’s belt in the sky. Were we seeing from the light from the neon-white foam of the sea, or the pinpricks from the sky? It was hard to be certain. I only knew that as I walked clumsily on the sand, thinking of camels that sailed through grit with not a foot out of place, that this was a special place.
A special place where we awaited sea turtles.
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There are many things that live in the sea, but they don’t always come to land. Unless they are sea turtles, who spend their lives at sea, making long, oceanic migrations, holding their breath under water, but still arriving at chosen spots on land, on dates chosen by them, to lay eggs. Of all sea turtles, Olive ridleys are considered the most abundant. This isn’t a very high bar, though: ridleys, olive-coloured and weighing about 50kg, are threatened too.
They have several nesting sites around the world, but they congregate in large numbers only at a few chosen places. At these sites, they arrive en-masse to nest in tens of thousands, in a spectacle known as the arribada (a Spanish word for “arrival by sea"). Olive ridley turtles have major arribadas in Costa Rica, Mexico, parts of Central America and India’s east coast.
Last year, India did not witness mass nesting at one of its nesting beaches in Rushikulya in Odisha. In February and March this year, however, the same beach received hundreds of thousands of Olive ridley turtles. There is also an ongoing second wave of nesting. Odisha has three mass nesting sites, all in varying conditions. Gahirmatha, near Bhitarkanika, adjoins the Dhamra port where the beach has been shrinking in size. Devi, adjoining the Paradip harbour and port, currently sees sporadic nesting and intensive offshore fishing. But Rushikulya, on the mouth of the eponymous river in southern Odisha, endures and continues to grow since its discovery in the early 1990s.
We were in Rushikulya to see the turtles, to clear the beach of disturbances, and hopefully witness a nursery of joy. As our vision got better, the sea spray seemed to rise. The world grew mistier, its grey edges blurring. The sea continued to hum, roar and crash, as if that sound was making the world. My biologist friend would allow no light. So we stayed in that strange luminous darkness: Like sitting in the belly of a whale, watching the world through its open mouth.
The beach below us was dotted with egg shards. The white shards too were a source of light in our newly hatched visions. But they meant destruction, not hatching. Though the beach was fenced by the authorities, some of the eggs had been eaten by predators. Others were disturbed by newer turtles coming to nest. This tongue of sand, lying at a river mouth, was prime real estate: In all of the world, here was one of the few places where hundreds of thousands of sea turtles came regularly, following invisible lines and maps.
This was also a place of mothers. It wasn’t a place which I could fully grasp, because it was beyond the language of the human. As a woman, I can’t explain why arribada beaches are important. I can only try to explain through the voice of the turtle, following her own radar and her own nautical journey, yet homing towards a nondescript beach, laying mostly in the night, and then leaving as silently as she came.
Protecting the turtles
The entire east coast of India also gets attention when thousands of the same turtles wash ashore, dead, in different coastal areas. It is unclear why they die. But we can guess: Possibly by getting caught in fishing nets. Sea turtles are adept at holding their breaths underwater, but when caught in a net, they get stressed and can drown. Deaths this year may have been due to trawling close to the coast. Many states have fisheries regulations that specify the usage of turtle excluder devices (TED) in trawl nets, also disallowing mechanised fishing vessels within five nautical miles from the shore.
The deaths of the Olive ridley turtles might seem like a drop in an ocean of hundreds of thousands of other animals. But it shows us at least two things. One, live turtles are under threat from the actions of people, other than natural threats. Two, turtles have limited habitats that they have chosen for nesting. We can celebrate their arrival at single beaches, but it if we lose these beaches, the impacts on turtle populations will be devastating.
It appears we are locked in battle with creatures who are over 6 million years old—roaming animals that ask only for a stretch of unhindered sand once a year; creatures that have chosen our coasts. But we too covet the gentle curves of natural bays. We want to dock in these bays too, and with ships, not flippers. There are many such examples beyond Odisha, like Nicobar’s Galathea, where a port will come up at the nesting spot of leatherbacks, the world’s largest sea turtles.
And beaches themselves are mobile, liminal spaces—suffering erosions, downstream pollution, accretions, or the shifting of river mouths. Building infrastructure on egg-laying beaches is a penultimate threat that turtles cannot bear. Ports and construction must avoid arribadas. Trawling cannot commence close to the coast in the breeding season. We also need to re-evaluate market economics—such as a fair-trade value for seafood for primary harvesters, which will reduce over-harvesting pressure and help in adherence to no-fishing zones.
For the viable eggs that remain in Rushikulya, light signifies freedom, a sort of choice. Some of the newly hatched turtles, small and defenceless, will move towards the light in April and May. This could be the light by waves, or by the stars, or the lights left on by people, staining the horizon-line, shining bright when you are born on a dark beach. The latter can leave hatchlings disoriented, turning them in opposite directions, never to reach the sea.
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That night, at the end of our walk, I looked up at the sky, at that extraordinary glitter of stars. The spell of vision still held. In that solitary, musical space, the stars seemed larger than usual. Some of the stars may have been dead. But what was arriving at this beach was alive. Heart beating-in-eggs alive. Waiting-for-the sea-alive. We just have to allow it.
Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist and author of Wild and Wilful: Tales of 15 Iconic Indian Species. Views expressed are personal.
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