This is a journey of perseverance not only of olive ridley turtles but also of their guardians.
One must feel a sense of awe when they think about these charismatic creatures. Creatures that have outlived dinosaurs and are still surviving the test of time and humanity. They keep our oceans clean and are essential not just for oceans but also for our beach ecology. Having evolved over 100 million years and still remaining mostly unchanged, they bring valuable insight into the Earth’s past. Sadly, their numbers are dwindling due to anthropogenic activities.
The forest department and fisherman communities have joined forces to protect one of the ocean’s most endangered species--the Olive Ridley Sea turtles. The objectives are to conserve biodiversity, as well as to improve fishing yields and heighten socio-economic benefits for the local community.
In one instance, the efforts put in by a young fisherman Jalil and his wife Zeenat to nurture olive ridley sea turtles are paying off in a small fishing hamlet in the Nellore district, Andhra Pradesh.
They monitor turtle tracks on the sand at night as thousands of females visit the beach periodically to lay eggs.
Showing a notebook that Zeenat maintains of a list of hatchlings saved, she says with pride that they were able to release 7,000 hatchlings to the sea from January to May, after protecting them from predators from their hatchery alone.
This is no mean achievement, only one in 1,000 turtle hatchlings survive as many of them fall prey to predators and die after getting caught in trawler nets or die after eating plastic (our litter that goes to the oceans).
Jalil says plastic is a horrible thing that human beings are over-consuming, the effects of which are visible in the oceans. From a decade of rescuing turtles from trawling nets and injured turtles he came across, he finds that a big proportion of marine life falls prey to our unintentional misdeeds.
He is also happy to see his fellow fisherman, from other villages in his district, chipping in with their contributions to the cause.
“The financial support I get helps my family survive. What really brings joy is when I save a life. I will continue to do this in the years to come and I hope that our beach will also be a mass nesting place for olive ridleys like Odisha,” Jalil said.
These mystical animals are ambassadors for their ecosystems, bringing attention to the need for conservation efforts in seascapes across the country and across the world.
Today, one government body, a few fishermen like Jalil and a few conservationists and photographers are thinking about this as a crisis. As the circle of life takes its course, it’s up to us to make our oceans cleaner, it’s up to each of us to try and make our space safer for other species to fight for their survival.