NAVI MUMBAI: Two more Olive Ridley turtles were satellite tagged at Guhagar beach in Ratnagiri on Wednesday under a collaborative project of the Ratnagiri division of Mangrove Foundation, Maharashtra Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). The turtles, both females, have been named Bageshri and Guha.
This move is part of a research programme launched last year to monitor the movement of the turtles and track their journey to and from nesting sites. The transmitters attached to five female turtles last year were lost, which led the Mangrove Foundation and the WII to satellite tag these two turtles.
Manas Manjarekar, deputy director (research and capacity building) of Mangrove Foundation, told TOI: “We radio-tagged seven turtles since last year. However, the radio contact of the five female turtles who were tagged last year was lost early. Hence, two more have been tagged now.”
He added that some of the turtles which were tagged last year travelled from Ratnagiri coast—Velas, Anjarle and Guhagar beaches—to Gujarat coast, and some even further to Karwar coast in Karnataka. This is the first time that such satellite tracking of Olive Ridley turtles is being done along the western coast. Similar projects were undertaken only along the eastern coast earlier.
According to researchers from World Wide Fund for Nature-India, Olive Ridley turtles are the smallest and most abundant sea turtles in the world—inhabiting warm waters of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. These turtles, along with their cousin—the Kemp’s Ridley turtle, are best known for their unique mass nesting called Arribada, where thousands of females come together on the same beach to lay eggs. However, Olive Ridley turtle population has been declining over the past years, and the species has been listed as ‘vulnerable’ in the IUCN Red List.
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