In her second “GT” Insights con­tri­bu­tion, A Lajwanti Naidu shares what she has learned about olive rid­ley turtles and how the Andhra Pra­desh Tour­ism Author­ity does and can con­trib­ute to their con­ser­va­tion.

Travel teaches more than books do. With this in mind, Andhra Pra­desh Tour­ism Author­ity organ­ised an edu­ca­tion­al tour to Diviseema and the Krishna Wild­life Sanc­tu­ary (KWS) — an emer­ging eco­tour­ism des­tin­a­tion — for the stu­dents of Acharya Nagar­juna Uni­ver­sity. Forest Depart­ment Ranger V Bhavani led the tour in which I also par­ti­cip­ated.

Diviseema is a small and fer­tile island loc­ated in the delta region where the Krishna River divides in two and meets the Bay of Bengal. Not­able places on Diviseema include Kuchipudi, Movva, Ghant­as­ala, Sangameswaram, Nagay­alanka, Bhavadevar­ap­alli, Koduru, Hama­s­aladeevi, Mop­idevi, and Avani­gadda.

The Krishna Wild­life Sanc­tu­ary (KWS) offers a safe place for the nest­ing of olive rid­ley turtles, which is one of sev­er­al rare and vul­ner­able spe­cies for which KWS provides import­ant hab­it­at. Anoth­er is the fish­ing cat (Pri­o­n­ailur­us viver­rinus).

Among the import­ant turtle nest­ing loc­a­tions are the beaches of Baruva, Kalingapat­nam, Kak­in­ada, Machilip­at­nam, Ham­saladeevi and Nagay­alanka. To help facil­it­ate nest­ing, which takes place from Janu­ary to May, the AP Forest Depart­ment and Tour­ism Author­ity have doubled the num­ber of rook­er­ies along the Krishna dis­trict coast from five in the last breed­ing sea­son to 10. Where mass nest­ing has been observed at these sites, it is estim­ated that more than 88,500 eggs were pro­act­ively pro­tec­ted last sea­son. Three new rook­ery loc­a­tions have recently been iden­ti­fied at Lankaven­id­ibba, Nachugunta, and Sor­lagondi.

At an olive rid­ley turtle rook­ery / hatch­ery on an edu­ca­tion­al and tech­nic­al tour organ­ised by Andhra Pra­desh Tour­ism Author­ity. Image sup­plied by A Lajwanti Naidu.

The fol­low­ing sec­tion focuses on the life­cycle and nest­ing beha­viour of the olive rid­ley turtle. To skip to the tour­ism-related tech­nic­al learn­ings from the tour, scroll down to “Learn­ings”.

About the olive ridley turtle

Inhab­it­ing the warm trop­ic­al waters of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indi­an oceans, the olive rid­ley turtle (Lepidochelys oli­vacea) is the smal­lest and most abund­ant of all sea turtles. These turtles — along with their cous­in the kem­p’s rid­ley turtle (Lepidochelys kempii) — are best known for their unique mass nest­ing called arribada – a Span­ish word mean­ing “arrival” — in which thou­sands of females arrive togeth­er on the same beach to lay eggs. Although found in rel­at­ive abund­ance, the num­ber of olive rid­leys have been declin­ing over the past few years. The spe­cies has been clas­si­fied as “Vul­ner­able” by the IUCN Red List.

Grow­ing to about two feet in length, and 50 kg in weight, the olive rid­ley gets its name from its olive-colored car­a­pace, which is heart-shaped and roun­ded. Males and females grow to the same size, how­ever, females have a slightly more roun­ded car­a­pace as com­pared to the male. Olive rid­leys feed mainly on jelly­fish, shrimp, snails, crabs, mol­luscs and a vari­ety of fish and their eggs. They spend their entire lives in the ocean and migrate thou­sands of kilo­metres between feed­ing and mat­ing grounds over the course of a year.

Olive rid­ley turtles reach sexu­al matur­ity at approx­im­ately 15 years of age, which is early com­pared to oth­er sea turtles. Olive rid­leys use three dif­fer­ent strategies to nest: arriba­das, sol­it­ary nests, and mixed. Inter­est­ingly, females return to the very same beach from where they first hatched to lay their eggs.

Dur­ing the arribada phe­nomen­on, some 600,000 or more females emerge from the waters, over a peri­od of five to sev­en days, to lay about 100 eggs each. They lay their eggs in con­ic­al nests about one and a half feet deep, which they labor­i­ously dig with their hind flip­pers. Olive rid­ley tracks are 70 – 80 cm wide and have asym­met­ric­al fore­limb marks, and no tail drag marks.

The female turtle emerges from the sea at night and ascends the beach, search­ing for a suit­able nest­ing site — some­where dark and quiet. Once at the chosen site, she begins to dig a body pit by using all four flip­pers. She removes the dry sur­face sand beneath her, which will later be used to cov­er the nest. Once she has cre­ated a body pit, she begins to dig an egg cham­ber using just her rear flip­pers, altern­at­ing between the right and left flip­per to scoop out the damp sand. When she can reach no deep­er, she pauses and begins con­trac­tions to lay her eggs, her rear flip­pers rising off the sand. Each con­trac­tion will pro­duce between one and four eggs in quick suc­ces­sion.

Once her clutch is com­plete, she closes the nest using her rear flip­pers in a sim­il­ar way to dig­ging her egg cham­ber, just in reverse. She places sand on top of the cham­ber, until the eggs are com­pletely covered. She gently pats the damp sand on top of her eggs, using the under­side of her shell (plastron).

The cam­ou­fla­ging pro­cess now begins. Slowly mov­ing for­ward, she throws the dry, sur­face sand behind her. This is an effort to con­ceal the loc­a­tion of her eggs from pred­at­ors. She may move for­ward while she is doing this. When she is done, she heads down the beach and back to sea, nev­er to return until the next time she lays. The eggs are left alone.

The tem­per­at­ure of the nest determ­ines a hatchling’s gender. This is called tem­per­at­ure-depend­ent sex determ­in­a­tion (TSD). Warm­er tem­per­at­ures pro­duce mostly females, while cool­er tem­per­at­ures pro­duce mostly males. There is a pivotal tem­per­at­ure that pro­duces an even num­ber of males and females. (The TSD ratio, com­mon to rep­tiles, dif­fers between spe­cies and nest loc­a­tions.) The eggs and res­ult­ing olive rid­ley hatch­lings are left to fend for them­selves.

Because hatch­lings are small and the egg cham­bers are deep, it is almost impossible for a single hatch­ling to escape from the cham­ber alone. As hatch­lings break free from their shell inside the egg cham­ber, they stim­u­late oth­er hatch­lings to emerge from their eggs too. Once most hatch­lings have emerged from their shells, they climb on top of the dis­carded egg­shells to pro­pel them­selves to the top of the cham­ber. The hatch­lings near the top of the egg cham­ber scratch down sand from above and around them.

The coast of Orissa in India is the largest mass nest­ing site for olive rid­leys, fol­lowed by the coasts of Mex­ico and Costa Rica. After about 45 – 65 days, the eggs begin to hatch, and beaches are quickly swamped with crawl­ing olive rid­ley turtle babies, mak­ing their first and most haz­ard­ous trek towards the vast ocean. Dur­ing this trek they are exposed to pred­at­ors like jack­als, birds, hyen­as, fid­dler crabs, and fer­al dogs lurk­ing around, wait­ing to feed on them. Oth­er dangers await them beneath the waves.

An olive rid­ley turtle hatch­ling makes a hard right turn dur­ing its haz­ard­ous sprint to the sea by Pawar Pooja (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wiki­me­dia.

Learnings

The stu­dents on tour were edu­cated on the role of loc­al com­munit­ies on Diviseema. We inter­ac­ted with Yanadi tribespeople trained in the con­ser­va­tion of olive rid­ley turtles. They demon­strated how they identi­fy and col­lect eggs and secure safer nest­ing sites for them.

Sponsored by the Andhra Pra­desh gov­ern­ment to do this import­ant con­ser­va­tion work — which includes keep­ing open the rook­er­ies for off-sea­son vis­its by stu­dents, tour­ists, and loc­al stake­hold­ers — it is a tough enough task for the Yanadi to simply sur­vive! Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions on Diviseema are unavail­able; pois­on­ous snakes inhab­it the island; the only means of trans­port­a­tion is by boat; and med­ic­al facil­it­ies are out of reach in case of emer­gen­cies. All neces­sit­ies, includ­ing water, must be brought to Diviseema. Fur­ther­more it is very hot dur­ing sum­mer and highly unpre­dict­able dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

My tour­ism-related tech­nic­al learn­ings included:

The boats used for trans­port­a­tion must fol­low safety pro­to­cols and be registered with loc­al police to ensure safety for tour­ists.

Pro­mo­tion is needed to increase tour­ism, through which rev­en­ue can be gen­er­ated to loc­al areas.

To bet­ter pre­serve the pristine envir­on­ment, loc­al author­it­ies should devel­op a per­mit sys­tem to reg­u­late vis­its by tour­ists, stu­dents, and research­ers.

Home stays – rather than new con­struc­tion – should be encour­aged to provide accom­mod­a­tion to vis­it­ors that deliv­er eco­nom­ic bene­fits to host com­munit­ies.

Sim­il­arly, mobile canteens – rather than per­man­ent build­ings – are the best option to provide food and bever­ages for tour­ists when they are not with their hosts.

As Mar­garet Mead said: “Nev­er doubt that a small group of thought­ful, com­mit­ted cit­izens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Andhra Pra­desh Tour­is­m’s nas­cent involve­ment in the con­ser­va­tion and pro­tec­tion of olive rid­ley turtles is but a first step that can go a long way.

Fea­tured image: Olive rid­ley turtles by Chandan Singh (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr.

About the author

A Lajwanti Naidu

Addala Lajwanti Naidu is an aca­dem­ic and pro­lif­ic writer on respons­ible tour­ism, includ­ing issues related to skills devel­op­ment, eco­nom­ic impact, cli­mate change, con­ser­va­tion of spe­cies, poverty alle­vi­ation, the employ­ment oppor­tun­it­ies of the visu­ally-chal­lenged, sus­tain­ing loc­al com­munit­ies with art and cul­ture, con­ser­va­tion of the arts, and tour­ism industry integ­ra­tion. With an acu­men for teach­ing and skills devel­op­ment, and a pro­ponent of the idea that tour­ism is a tool for poverty alle­vi­ation, A Lajwanti Naidu is presently asso­ci­ated with Andhra Pra­desh Tour­ism Author­ity as Assist­ant Dir­ect­or- Capa­city Build­ing.