Soumya Ranjan Biswal alleges 1,600 have died so far; wildlife official refutes claim, says numbers exaggerated
Soumya Ranjan Biswal, convener of Odisha Paryavaran Sanrakshan Abhiyan Trust, surveying the carcasses of Olive Ridley sea turtles. Photo: Ashis Senapati Around 1,600 Olive Ridley sea turtle carcasses were washed ashore recently on the coastline along the Puri district in Odisha. Many dead turtles bore injuries, pointing to the possibility that they were trapped either in a trawl or gill net, claimed a conservation activist.
The carcasses were found on a 30-kilometre stretch of beach from the Jatadhari river mouth in Jagatsinghpur district to the Devi river mouth in Puri district under Puri Wildlife Division, said Soumya Ranjan Biswal, an environmentalist and the convener of Odisha Paryavaran Sanrakshan Abhiyan Trust.
“We conducted a survey from February 1, 2024 and found 1,600 carcasses. Turtles die after getting entangled in fishing nets. Now the beach is the graveyard of the turtles,” he alleged. Biswal, from the seaside village Gundalaba in Puri, has been working on turtle conservation along the Odisha coast for over a decade.
The Odisha Marine Fishing Regulation Act of 1982 requires trawlers to fish more than five kilometres from shore. However, hundreds of fishing trawlers violate the law by fishing near the shore, and as a result, turtles die from becoming entangled in the trawl nets, according to Biswal.
The environmentalist claimed forest and wildlife officials in the state had been downplaying the number of deaths to save their skins. “The deaths of a large number of turtles will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the populations of endangered marine species,” Biswal added.
Devi river mouth beach was a mass-nesting site for turtles till 1999. But the forest department planted casuarinas on the beach after the 1999 super cyclone, and as a result, turtles abandoned the beach, said the conservation activist, who was India YuWah Advocate 2022-24 by the United Nations.
The risk to turtles can be reduced by equipping trawlers with turtle excluder device (TED) which is a small additional net or metal grid inside the net that allows the entangled turtles to escape while the fish catch is retained, said Hemant Rout, the secretary of Gahirmatha Marine Turtles and Mangrove Conservation Society.
“But the concept of enforcing legislation to use TED in trawler nets is not even remotely in sight. Many turtles are also dying in Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary due to illegal fishing,” alleged Rout.
When contacted, Monalisa Mohapatra, forest range officer, Astarang, Puri, stated, “We are patrolling in the sea. We have arrested 25 fishermen and seized three fishing trawlers recently on charges of illegally fishing near the coast. Some turtles have died within our range”.
To protect turtles, the state government banned fishing activities within the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary, which is located about 20 kilometres off the coast, from November 1 to May 31. Forest officials have already arrested approximately 320 fishermen and seized 32 fishing vessels on charges of illegal fishing in Gahirmatha to date.
The rookery of the turtles at Gahirmatha was declared a marine sanctuary in 1997 by the state government. “Though the beach from Jatadhari river mouth to Devi river mouth is not under the jurisdiction of marine sanctuary, surprise raids are being carried out on the trawlers to prevent them from fishing within the turtle congregation areas in the stretch,” said Susanta Nanda, principal chief conservator of forest, wildlife and chief wildlife warden, Odisha.
Nanda claimed that while some turtles have died, Biswal has exaggerated the number of dead turtles. “A multi-layered patrolling exercise has been launched by the forest department, fisheries department, marine police and coast guard in the sea to protect Olive Ridley sea turtles,” he said.
Read more: Olive Ridley turtles are back on Mangaluru beaches!
To ensure effective patrolling, 61 on-shore camps and five off-shore camps have been set up in the state’s four wildlife divisions of Bhadrak, Rajnagar, Puri and Berhampur. Five high speed boats, 13 trawlers and support boats have been put into service to intercept illegal marine fishing in prohibited zones, added Nanda.
Orissa High Court on February 23, 2021 took suo motu cognisance of Down to Earth’s February 2021 report on the death of around 800 Olive Ridley sea turtles due to negligence by Odisha’s forest and fisheries departments. The High Court also directed the state government March 16, 2021 to install transponders in all mechanised fishing vessels to track their movements and save the turtles from fishing nets.
New Space India Ltd, a public sector undertaking under the Department of Space, has prepared a schedule to deploy the transponders in all mechanised fishing vessels in Odisha by September 2024 for the protection of Olive Ridley sea turtles on the Odisha coast, Parshottam Rupala, minister of fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying, told the Rajya Sabha on February 9, 2024.
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