Hope floats for injured sea turtles as Dahanu group ensures rescue, treatment and release

MUMBAI: A pair of amputee olive ridley turtles shows marvellous resilience swimming around the tiled cement tank. One has lost 80 percent of its left front flipper. Another's left front flipper is badly mutilated. They must have been the victims of fishermen frustrated by the depleting fish catch, who cut off flippers of turtles stuck in their nets to keep the expensive nets intact; or of the sheer bad luck of being caught in a ghost net discarded at sea and injuring a flipper struggling to break free. They have recovered a good deal since: the elder of the two has been fitted with a prosthetic flipper, a first of its kind invented by Dr Dinesh at the Wildlife Conservation & Animal Welfare Association (WCAWA) in .

To bring luck to the turtle and success to the prosthetic flipper prototype, the turtle was named `namo' (as in the religious intonation) and the prototype has been called the `Dahanu flipper.' In 2007, Dahanu resident Dhaval and his friends started witnessing dead turtles with flipper injuries being washed ashore on beaches of the coastal town. After working on creating awareness among fisher folk for four years, they started getting rescue calls. The turtles were still being washed ashore; this time they were alive. Kansara, who founded WCAWA in 2013, started nursing sea turtles in 2011, when he found seven with severe injuries and missing flippers washed ashore in a week. He, along with friends, dug a pit on the beach and laid a tarpaulin sheet inside, improvising a turtle holding pond. Dr Vinherkar, roped in soon after, started treating the marine reptiles for floater syndrome, a condition that hinders their diving ability, parasites, and flipper injuries all directly or indirectly caused by fishing nets or sea pollution.

From out in the open, the turtles moved indoors when the forest department spared its garage and parking area for the recuperating reptiles. Since then, Kansara and Dr Vinherkar, along with their team, have rescued, treated and released over 90 sea turtles. The modest treatment facility has acquired basic infrastructure. “But our centre is more of a `do it yourself jugaad',“ says Kansara. “The sea water in our holding tanks needs continuous filtration to keep it pathogenfree and fit for reuse,“ says Dr Vinherkar. “A filtration unit costs around Rs 10-12 lakh, which was beyond our budget. So we started a DIY project to build our own unit. But it has been stalled due to lack of funds to procure filtration media and a motor pump that would work with sea water without hiccups,“ says Kansara.The facility needs an X-ray machi ne. “Every time we have to get an x-ray done, we have to take the turtle to a human hospital. Sometimes, they don't entertain us,“ says Dr Vinherkar. The facility also needs deep freezers to store turtle food and preserve dead specimens for taxidermy , electrocautery and laser therapy units, and a computer and a printer. Besides this upgrade, the WCAWA team wishes to transform the facility into a state-of-the-art treatment and research centre which would also comprise an orphanage for turtles unfit for release and an information and awareness centre with an auditorium to screen documentaries on sea turtles. This could also generate ecotourism revenue for the facility to become self-reliant. “We'd also like to tag the released turtles so we get information about the distances they travel,“ says Dr Vinherkar.

Sunil Limaye, chief conservator of forests, Thane, said he is trying to get grants for the treatment centre's upgrade. "I've asked for Rs 10 lakh for renovation. In the next phase, I will try to get a grant of Rs 50 lakh for a sub-centre which would have a natural sand pit for recuperating turtles."