Click to play videoBhitarkanika (Orissa): The turtles travel thousands of kilometre from deep sea to the beaches of Gahirmatha in Orissa every year to lay eggs and begin a new life, but what they get instead is death.
This year the turtles have yet not reached the beach for nesting, but as they now copulate within five km inside sea they are killed in large numbers due to mechanised fishing activities.
In the last one month more than three thousand turtles have been killed according to forest official figures.
“Turtles are being killed mainly by trawlers and fishing nets though according to Orisssa Marine Fisheries Regulation Act - 1982, fishing is banned up to 20 km in sea,” says Chief Wild Life Warden, Orissa, Bijoy Ketan Patnaik.
Like Gahirmatha there are other two nesting sites in Orissa - Rusikulya and Devi beaches.
But to protect the hundreds of km long beaches, the Orissa forest department has only 36 armed policemen.
“Whatever the government is doing, it is only in pen and paper. On practical grounds there is lack of manpower,” says local resident, Gahirmatha, Babuli.
Even the mandatory TED or the turtle excluder device that prevents the turtles from getting trapped in gill-nets is not being used.
Two years ago around five lakh turtles came to the Orissa coast for nesting, last year their numbers were reduced to one and a half lakh.
And this year nesting has already been delayed by more than one month.
Every year the forest department promise that they have taken adequate measures to protect the Olive Ridley turtles, but on the ground the situation is quite different.
And if such killings continue, it wont be long when these beautiful creatures would become extinct from this area.
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