Trawlers under lens for turtle deaths
The Telegraph India 7 Dec 08;
Cuttack, Dec. 7: More than 3,300 carcasses of the rare Olive Ridley turtles have been found on Gahirmatha coast in the past fortnight triggering concern among wildlife conservationists here.
It is suspected that the endangered species of turtles have been killed by trawlers despite stringent laws that make it mandatory for the fishing boats to use turtle excluder devices.
An ongoing survey by Maneka Gandhi’s People for Animals (PFA) points to the alarming number of deaths after congregations of turtles were spotted off the Orissa coast since middle of November. The turtles mate in seawaters before the female ones come ashore for laying eggs. The beaches of Orissa at Gahirmatha, Devi river-mouth and Rushikulya mouth are among the few places in the world which witness the mass nesting of the turtles. Tens of thousands of turtles come ashore to lay eggs every year in winter.
“Reports received so far indicate a higher mortality rate among the turtles off the coast of Devi river-mouth. Most of them have been killed by fishing trawlers and the dead turtles have washed ashore at Ramchandi near Puri,” PFA (Orissa unit) secretary Jiban Das said today.
PFA field reports had counted nearly 2,000 dead turtles at Ramchandi and another 1,300 turtle carcasses along the Gahirmatha beach. “Most of them have big wounds on the back symbolising that they ad been hit by the propeller of a boat,” Das said.
Meanwhile, worried over rising turtle casualty, the state government has decided to join hands with NGOs to undertake a survey on the mortality rate. “Joint monitoring would bring in transparency into the problem of turtle mortality on the Orissa coast as there has been glaring discrepancies between the government estimates and the surveys conducted by NGOs,” Operation Kachhapa co-ordinator Biswajit Mohanty said.
Operation Kachhapa has been engaged in monitoring turtle mortality along the Orissa coast. “With a much lower feedback on the turtle deaths, the government has apparently not been able to gauge the mass annihilation that has continued on the Orissa coast,” he added.
Government estimates showed drop in mortality from 13,575 in 1997-98 to 3,242 in 2006-07 and just 204 in 2007-08. The official figure, however, was described as much below the actual death toll by the NGOs. The survey reports by the NGOs suggested turtle mortality in the range of 10,000 to 15,000 every year. “The casualty could be even more as all the carcasses do not wash ashore,” Mohanty said, while welcoming the recent deployment of two patrol boats by the fisheries department.
