More than 1,100 dead olive ridley turtles have washed ashore on the beaches of Tamil Nadu state in southern India this month. Most were found near the state capital, Chennai.
“I never heard [of] such large numbers of turtles stranded at any beaches of Tamil Nadu at least in the last three decades,” K. Sivakumar, an ecology professor at Pondicherry University, told Mongabay.
Every year, olive ridley turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) gather off India’s coast to breed. Female turtles come ashore to the beaches where they hatched to lay their own eggs, while the males remain in the water. Typically, between 100-150 turtles nest on Chennai’s beaches annually, so the stranding of more than 1,000 turtles is surprising, Sivakumar said.
Chennai resident Rajiv Rai told Mongabay he’s spotted about 80 dead turtles on a 2-kilometer (1.24-mile) stretch of beach near his home. He said he alerts the state’s forest department, whose staff bury the carcasses on the beach, although the burials are now lagging.
An initial autopsy of one carcass revealed lung lesions; many dead turtles had bulging eyes. Both observations indicate the turtles likely died from suffocation and drowning, Yuvan Aves, a Chennai-based environmental activist, told Mongabay. The official post-mortem report hasn’t been made public yet.
Aves added he’s also observed an unusually large number of male carcasses on the beach.
The reasons for the mass deaths are unclear. However, Sivakumar said both male and female turtles could have gathered near nesting beaches to breed. If there was net fishing in the area, the turtles, which need to surface to breathe, may have become entangled and drowned.
If that’s the case, Sivakumar added, it’s difficult to say whether the turtles got caught in fishing nets near Chennai or farther away, then ended up off Chennai due to winds or currents.
Aves said commercial fishing vessels operating in Chennai’s waters often don’t abide by local laws, which likely contributed to the deaths. For example, Tamil Nadu has banned trawlers within 5 nautical miles (9 km) from shore, but the law isn’t typically enforced. Trawler nets must also have turtle excluder devices installed, but “nobody notoriously has it,” Aves said.
Following media coverage of the crisis, the Tamil Nadu government caught 24 trawler boats operating illegally in Chennai’s waters, and has created a special task force in response. The government said in a release that a joint patrol team is now monitoring boats and ships in the area.
Manish Meena, Chennai’s wildlife warden, told Mongabay India that “night patrols have been intensified to protect hatchlings.”
The scale of death of a species that was once endangered and has only partly recovered due to conservation efforts “exceeds one’s capacity of feeling,” Aves said. “You can stand on coast right now anywhere in Chennai and every few strides, you can see bulge-eyed turtles till the horizon.”
Banner image of dead olive ridley turtle by Rajiv Rai.
