doWn tO eArTh

On March 23, 2009, environmental group Green-peace International issu-ed a full-page advert in Financial Times and The International Herald Tribune to draw the world’s attention to the Olive Ridley turtles—marine reptiles that come annually to the beaches of Gahirmatha in Orissa to nest.
The advertisement drew on the hype around the cheap car Nano by Tata, the company building the port along with the L&T group, to raise alarm about the impact of an upcoming port on the endangered turtles.


The port at Dhamra is less than five km from the Bhitarkanika National Park; it is 15 km from the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary. The beaches are one of the world’s largest nesting sites for the turtles. The turtles didn’t nest there last year; this year’s nesting season—from December to March—hadn’t seen any turtles.

March 24 proved a surprise.

Unaware of the advertisement—and the talk of construction work driving the turtles away from the beaches where they breed—thousands of olive-coloured, heart-shaped shells emerged from the waters off the Gahirmatha coast. The turtles had arrived finally, said Jogendra Babaji, a fisher from a village near the national park. The turtles were seen floating in the inshore waters around sunset. “I could see some of them in the water. As darkness fell they trekked to the beach. First they came in hundreds and as the night wore on there were thousands,” he said. Apart from a few curious fishers like him, the beach was deserted, he recalled as he narrated how each turtle picked a spot for itself.

The turtles levelled the area with their fore legs and dug out sand with their flippers. The pits were about one-and-a-half feet deep. They lay their eggs in the pits and covered them with sand. “If one doesn’t see them laying eggs there is no way to know it’s a turtle nest.” After that the turtles returned to the sea, this time on a track different from the one they had used to come to the beach. The eggs would hatch in less than two months. Guided by the reflection of the sea, the baby turtles would join their kin.

While this cycle continued, from March 24-30, the Dhamra Port Company Ltd said the event vindicated their stand that the port does not pose any threat to the turtles. The company argued there were occasions earlier when the turtles did not visit the Orissa coast. Mass nesting did not happen in the early 1980s and the late 1990s. “The port construction started in late 2007,” a company spokesperson said.

So, why didn’t the turtles come to the beach in certain years? The answers are not known; there are only anecdotes. People in the Kendrapara district, under with the beach lies, say missile tests on the Wheeler island, close to the Gahirmatha sanctuary, and fishing ports could be responsible for the missing nesting years. But there are no scientific studies to back these conjectures. The state government, port authorities and conservationists—local and international—who claim the port disturbs the turtles have not carried out any study so far on the port’s possible impact on turtles.

“Mass nesting does not occur due to weather or other disturbances,” said Ashish Fernandes, ocean campaigner with Greenpeace India. “The Dhamra port construction could be an additional deterrent to mass nesting.” The company had invited activists for talks to allay the impact of port on the turtles, if any, but the green groups are not ready for any kind of meeting till the company stops construction.