Marine Turtle Newsletter 64:1-3, © 1994
seaturtle.org : MTN : ARCHIVES : Sign In
Marine Turtle Newsletter 64:1-3, © 1994
International concern is growing, environmentalists say, over a threat to the site where more sea turtles nest every year than in any other place on earth, the Gahirmatha beach in Orissa, India. The site, part of the Bhitarkanika nature sanctuary, is one of four remaining mass nesting beaches for the endangered olive ridley turtle, but by far the largest. According to scientists, more than 600,000 turtles arrived to lay their eggs during the course of a single week in March 1991, with 320,000 last year. Since olive ridleys lay a hundred or more eggs, the number of hatchlings can be enormous, and last year, more than three million are believed to have been hatched. Though the numbers are huge, the olive ridley, like other [sea] turtles, returns to lay its eggs in the place where it was born.
The Gahirmatha sanctuary is now threatened by Indian Government plans to develop a major fishing port for shrimp trawlers at Talchua, 10 km away, along with a processing plant, a large-scale prawn-culture facility and an access road straight through the mangroves near the nesting site. The port, according to local officials, is designed to be big enough to handle up to 500 fishing trawlers, and there are said by environmentalists already to be increasing numbers of adult turtles being caught in nets offshore. "Often," says Nicholas Mrosovsky, a top world expert on turtles, "they are killed as that is the quickest way to release them from the nets." With more fishing boats active, more turtles are bound to be caught, not least because whatever regulations are laid down to control the fishing, it is difficult to check the activity of each boat.
The Orissa State Government is planning to amend the Orissa Marine Fisheries Regulation Act 1982, to ban operation of trawlers within 20 km of the coastline, and is contemplating a ban on fishery activity off the Gahirmatha sanctuary during the turtle nesting season, but local environmentalists fear than even if the regulations are amended, enforcement will be insufficient. Existing legislation banning fishing within 5 km of the beach, for example, has not been very effective, with hundreds of dead turtles being reported every year. Moreover the port and its associated road is bound to create additional pressure on the mangrove forests, which are an important source of food for the olive ridleys. According to Shekar Dattatri, a young Madras-based film-maker who recorded the mass arrival of the olive ridleys a couple of years ago, "This is one of the few surviving naturalist spectacles in the world. Now I fear it will be lost forever."
While the Government of Orissa is said thus far to have been unmoved by appeals to halt the project, environmentalists counter by saying that there are viable alternatives for the siting of the port, including existing facilities at nearby Paradeep and Dhamara, both of which already have road access. These, they say, could be expanded in lieu of building an entirely new facility at Talchua. The Gahirmatha beach is the only [mass nesting] site in the Indian Ocean for the olive ridley, the other three being on the Pacific coastlines of Mexico and Costa Rica. [Some of] the largest mass nesting sites used to be on the Mexican coast, but according to Belinda Wright, an official of the World Conservation Union, IUCN, failure to protect the coast has led the turtles "to virtually disappear overnight from that region." Two of the world's top specialists on marine turtles, Karen and Scott Eckert of the Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute in California, warn that "there is no question but that the proposed developed could literally spell the end of the unrivalled nesting beach. This is an issue of global concern."
The olive ridley is classified as endangered in the IUCN's Red Data Book. It grows to a weight of up to 45 kg, and females lay their eggs on sandy beaches in topical and sub-tropical latitudes. Because of its habit of "arribadas" (mass nesting), still little understood by scientists, its long-term survival is linked to the preservation of its chosen beaches. While the campaign by environmentalists against the Talchua jetty has focused on the threat to the turtles themselves, one aspect now being examined by the campaigners is the potential economic benefits for Orissa if the beach is preserved unharmed. With "eco-tourism" growing internationally, a number of countries have already started attracting visitors who come simply to see spectacles of nature like nesting turtles. In Oman, for example, hundreds of people a year visit a well-known and well-protected beach used by another species of turtle for nesting. In Orissa, say some of the campaigners, it might be possible to attract overseas visitors on the same basis, providing a continuing source of revenue for the coastal dwellers that is dependent upon the survival of the olive ridley nesting beach and its surrounding ecosystem. With tourism one of the key areas scheduled for development in India, the Gahirmatha beach could well prove to be a useful additional attraction.
Meanwhile, the Orissa Government is reported to be pressing on with the Talchua development. "Already vast tracts of mangrove forests have been felled," says Dattatri. "The jetty will attract more people and cause more destruction." Readers concerned about the threat to the Gahirmatha beach might like to consider writing letters of appeal to India's Minister of the Environment and Forests, Paryavaran Bhavan, C.G.O. Complex, Lodi Road, Delhi 110003 INDIA. Source: Emirates News, 28 November 1993.
* URGENT NOTICE * As a result of the Gahirmatha appeal published in the October 1993 issue of the Marine Turtle Newsletter (MTN), the above article appeared in the Emirates News. The News is the official English daily of the Government of the United Arab Emirates, and is read not only by many of the 500,000 Indian residents in the UAE, but also by the Indian Embassy, which regularly relays India-related material back to Delhi. We hope that the exposure will generate more letters, and hopefully constructive pressure on the Government of India to reconsider its development plans near the Bhitarkanika Sanctuary. In addition to media attention, many MTN readers have already forwarded letters to Indian authorities. We URGE you, if you have not written, to reexamine our October appeal and write your letters today! This is an urgent notice. Please do it now, while there is still a chance. Please send a copy of your letter to us (MTN Editors) or to Romulus Whitaker (Madras Crocodile Bank, Post Bag No. 4, Mamallapuram 603 104, T.N., S. India). Letters should be sent to the following:
Chief Minister of Orissa
Government of Orissa
Bhubaneshwar, Orissa INDIA
Shri. P. V. Narasimha Rao
Honourable Prime Minister of India
Rashtrapati Bhavan
New Dehli 110011 INDIA
Shri. Kamal Nath
Minister of the Environment and Forests
Paryavaran Bhavan, C.G.O. Complex
Lodi Road, New Delhi 110003 INDIA