FIFTY-ODD YOUNGSTERS crouched along Elliot’s Beach at Besant Nagar in Chennai, digging into the sand a little after midnight on an unusually chilly Friday in February. A far cry from beach bums looking for serviceable flotsam, they were on a search for turtle eggs to rescue—that night they were set to join a lineage of ‘turtle walkers’.
A group of conservationists began walking along Chennai’s beaches in 1971 to document the status of sea turtles. The Olive Ridley was of particular interest: smallest of the seven species of marine turtles, the reptile is categorised as vulnerable—even though it is the most abundant of sea turtle species, the population has been declining. Olive Ridleys have been found along two beaches in Chennai, the 15-km-long Marina Beach and the kilometre-long Elliot’s Beach. With just 15 nests found in this stretch till mid-February this year, their presence has become depressingly low.
Between November and May—and peaking between January and March—every year, along the 1,076-km-long Tamil Nadu coast, the Olive Ridley nests two or three times, laying 80-150 eggs in each session. While the numbers might seem large, only one in 1,000 hatchlings survives the entire lifecycle. Turtles are creatures of blind instinct: 15-20 years after they are born, these survivors are guided by the earth’s magnetic field to their beach of birth to nest. And they keep returning throughout their long lives, swimming thousands of kilometres.
By the 1980s, the walks were attracting greater interest. “This was because of the involvement of organisations like WWF,” says Akila Balu, one of the coordinators for the walk. Groups would collect eggs during their walks and transport them to one of the forest department’s hatcheries to increase the chances of their survival before releasing them back on the beach. When the department closed down its hatcheries in 1988, some members of the initial group decided to start an organisation of their own. And thus was born the Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network (SSTCN).
The turtle walkers had gathered earlier that night at Neelankarai Beach. For most, it was their first expedition. After leading a question-and-answer session on the Olive Ridleys, V Arun, coordinator of the SSTCN, summoned the walkers to begin the night’s journey. It was half-past midnight.
Many of the walkers coalesced in groups of twos and threes, while some choose to stroll by themselves. The shutterbugs clicked away, couples held hands, some sang songs about the sea, and some just listened to the sound of the waves lashing the shore. All we had sighted were a couple of dead turtles and a puffer fish. But, at 3:40 am, a nest appeared. Excitement soared. The group huddled around the nest, while Karthik, one of the volunteers, dug it up and carefully removed the eggs. Two were passed around for a closer look. Slightly larger than a golf ball and pearlescent, they were soft to the touch and had a small dimple on the surface from the impact of the fall into the nest. The nest was then measured and, finally, all 126 eggs were placed in a cloth bag to be taken to the hatchery. At the hatchery, we were told, the nest would be reconstructed and the eggs replaced. “Around 45-60 days later, we will release these hatchlings into the sea,” Akila announced.
A hatchling’s gender is determined by the temperature of the nest. If it exceeds 29.13 °C, a female is born. “Due to global warming, we see an increase in the number of female turtles. This disparity is alarming,” said Arun.
Walks are open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays, but there are many volunteers who walk nearly every day. Shravan Krishnan, 22, has been involved for the past six years. Last year, he got to see an arribada (Spanish for ’mass arrival’) in Orissa. “I saw 80,000 turtles nesting at one go.” The experience of saving turtle eggs and releasing the hatchlings is special to him. Karthik Amarnath, another volunteer, felt similarly: “I miss the turtles when the season ends.”