Around a couple of weeks back, I happened to go for this so called turtle walk from neelangarai to besant nagar all along the beach... I am not a wild life enthusiast and had only read about turtle's being endangered species... only because a friend of mine goaded me to go, I ended up at around midnight on a saturday at a suburban beach in neelangarai...
We met these bunch of people, most of them students at the madras christian college (MCC), along with alum of that college, Aditya, who is now a teacher... We were to walk from neelangarai t besant nagar, along the coast and it apparently was going to take around 3-4 hours... i was mentally preparing myself... There were quite a few people, around 30 of them, a mix of youngsters, families, tam bram aunties and even a couple of firangis... Their interest in this surprised me...
It started with a small lecture from one of them about the turtles... I had read about Olive ridleys, especially since they nest in large numbers in Orissa... I was surprised to know that they actually nest in smaller numbers all along the coast of bay of bengal and even the arabian sea... One of the areas they nest was also this stretch along chennai... the purpose of the turtle walk is to create awareness among the general public about turtles and how human habitation, coupled with government apathy has resulted in widespread poaching and loss of nesting habitats for the turtles... The walk was to take us along the coast, in the night, along with these volunteers, who look for turtle eggs, dig them out, take them to a safe hatchery so that the eggs and small turtles that hatch can be preserved safe and let out in the sea... The early morning time was when the female turtles nest and it is very important to dig the eggs out when they are fresh and put them back in the hatchery within a few hours... this ensures that the eggs are preserved and also helps improve their survival rate... As it is, turtles have a survival rate of 1 in 1000 eggs that hatch... A turtle typically lays anywhere between 80 to150 eggs in one nesting...
So with that began our walk... after the short lecture, every was wide eyed and looking forward to see turtle eggs and turtles... As we started, the first sighting wasa disaster... a turtle nest, which is basically a hole in the beach that the turtle digs, had been already poached... meaning, the eggs had been stolen... :-(
we carried on... we were towards the end of the nesting season (which is from november to march) and so, the probability of find turtle eggs or turtles was going to be less... the next hour or so was a disappointing one... there was nothing of note to see... a few dead fish and a few glowing algae... the beautiful beach under the moon light was the only one keeping us awake and going... we rested half way through and every one was a tad disappointed... there were a whole bunch of kids from a class in the nearby school and all of them were full of expectation...
we resumed,after a few minutes of rest and as soon as we did, the volunteers who were leading the pack picked up something... there were trails of a turtle going back into the sea... since the olive ridlyes have fins in the front and legs at the back, they make unique trails on the sand that an expert would easily spot... seeing the trails, the team got excited... and they began to hunt for the nest...
after the turtle digs the hole and lays its eggs, it covers it up with sand but that leave the sand loose... thats the indication to spot the nest and so, the team began to look for spots of loose sand... they searched for 10 minutes and asked us to sit around the place... one of the school students happened to sit on a soft spot and ended up finding the nest!!!
we found all of 102 eggs... all soft, the size of a table tennis ball... it was fascinating... watching the eggs and how deep they had been laid in the sand... we had probably saved 1/10th of a turtle, given their survival rate... :) all this was just a few meters away from some of the big bungalows along the coast... wild life was thriving, struggling but surviving and we humans were so oblivious to it... we walked along and we found another nest, 120 eggs more... again, the turtle had come deep into the human habitation and had laid its eggs right next to some of the fishing boats... Around 3 hours after we had started, we were at the besant nagar beach... along the walk, we had also seen a variety of fish, jelly fish, squids, etc along the coast... life vibrant...
When we reached besant nagar and thought we were going to finish our walk at the hatchery, one of the student volunteers came running... he shouted out... a turtle had just come from the sea and was actually nesting!!! The whole group went running to the spot and there was a huge olive ridley actually digging her nest and laying eggs... the whole crowd went silent... we had another 120 eggs to save... as the turtle then slowly crawled its way back into the sea after covering up her nest, we had just witnessed something very spectacular... almost the whole lifecycle of a species that is fast becoming extinct from the face of the earth due to human activity... after managing to survive the earth for hundreds of thousands of years... many centuries before man came into being...
we walked over to the hatchery... there all the eggs we collected were put back into the sand, into a hole that had the exact same dimensions as the ones which the mother turtle had dug for laying the eggs... the dimensions are important as the depth at which the eggs are put back in will determine the temperature at which they hatch and subsequently their gender... as in all reptiles, the temperature will determine the gender of the hatchlings...
That was not the end... as these eggs were being put back in place in the fenced hatchery, another lot of eggs, which had been placed many days back actually hatched and we saw the young turtles, hardly the size of my index finger, coming out of the sand... turtles are genetically programmed to move towards light when they hatch... since the sun rises by the sea, they go to the sea, which is the place where they find food and hopefully survive... but since human habitation had come too close to these places, the streetlights we put up fool these small hatchlings into going away from the sea towards the road and they get crushed by the passing vehicles... to prevent this, the hatchery is fenced and these volunteers let the young baby turtles into the sea themselves in the morning...
by the time we finished it was 4 in the morning... it had been an eye opened and a different experience for someone like me... especially because i spend all my time immersed at work or sleeping at home... these student volunteers were doing this day in and day out, for 4 months, for the past 9 years... to save these turtles... these are unsung heroes of our city... doing this just for the passion of saving the turtles... caring for the environment...
I will probably go again on this turtle walk... probably encourage many more of my friends to do so... if anyone is interested, please let me know... i can pass on the number...
