Adhith Swaminathan
Satish Bhaskar visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 1979 and first documented the leatherback nesting beaches in the islands. He identified Great Nicobar Island and later, Little Andaman Island as important nesting beaches. As part of the Madras Crocodile Bank's surveys, Satish visited most of the beaches in the islands in the late 1970s and early 80s. In 1991, he visited Great Nicobar again with Manjula Tiwari and the established that Galathea on the south east coast was a major leatherback nesting site. In 2000, Harry Andrews of MCBT started a monitoring programme at Galathea as part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Environment Team (ANET).
I worked at Galathea during the 2001-02 season and spent several exciting months there, along with my partner, Meera. We worked with Saw Agu and Saw Glen, the Karen field assistants who were managing the leatherback project. They tagged and measured turtles while I collected tissue samples and other data. We encountered saltwater crocodiles (one of which walked up on the beach and bit off the head of a nesting leatherback), caught a reticulated python, collected data on a fascinating tree shrew - sparrowhawk - drongo association (see our papers on this), watched crab-eating macaques (not eating crabs), found a Malayan box turtle, and so on. We visited Indira Point, the southernmost tip of India, and the lighthouse which is now partially submerged after the December 2004 tsunami. On the first night there, I was checking out the beach and was rewarded with a nesting hawksbill, 20 years after Satish Bhaskar recorded one at the same location. We took a fishing boat around Indira Point and visited the idyllic safed balu (and ate a memorable fish and rice meal) en route to Kophen Heat and Alexandria beach, where dozens of leatherbacks nested each night.
All the beaches were destroyed by the tsunami, and though they are forming again, the coast has been completely transformed. Agu, who was at Galathea when the tsunami struck, has an amazing story of survival after 9 days at sea on a log. He is one of the most valued field assistants at ANET now, and helped establish the monitoring programme at Little Andamans.
After post-tsunami surveys had shown that nesting beaches in the Little Andamans were recovering, we decided that it would be easier to initiate a long term monitoring programme there, as the logistics of work in the Nicobars was too challenging. In May 2007, Manish Chandi and I set out by boat from Wandoor (where ANET is) with veteran boatman Saw Uncle Paung and Agu. After a pleasant stop at South Bay, we proceeded to West Bay where the boat nearly capsized when Manish and I were attempting to get off to get to the beach. Unable to bring the boat close enough to get back on, we trekked 15 hours to the next creek through uplifted coral and Ipomea swamps.
With Naveen Namboothri's help, we initiated the monitoring camps at South Bay in 2008 and at West Bay in 2010, where we have focussed our efforts since. Adhith Swaminathan has led the field camps and surveys for several years now, ably assisted by Saw Thesoro (Agu's brother). In the last eight years, we have monitored leatherback and olive ridley nesting at this beach, as well as beach profiles, nest depredation and other parameters. Over the last few years, we also fitted 10 satellite transmitters to leatherback turtles, showing that they migrate east along the coast of Sumatra, some all the way to Western Australia, as well as west to Mozambique and Madagascar.
For more information, click here.
For our papers, click here.
I worked at Galathea during the 2001-02 season and spent several exciting months there, along with my partner, Meera. We worked with Saw Agu and Saw Glen, the Karen field assistants who were managing the leatherback project. They tagged and measured turtles while I collected tissue samples and other data. We encountered saltwater crocodiles (one of which walked up on the beach and bit off the head of a nesting leatherback), caught a reticulated python, collected data on a fascinating tree shrew - sparrowhawk - drongo association (see our papers on this), watched crab-eating macaques (not eating crabs), found a Malayan box turtle, and so on. We visited Indira Point, the southernmost tip of India, and the lighthouse which is now partially submerged after the December 2004 tsunami. On the first night there, I was checking out the beach and was rewarded with a nesting hawksbill, 20 years after Satish Bhaskar recorded one at the same location. We took a fishing boat around Indira Point and visited the idyllic safed balu (and ate a memorable fish and rice meal) en route to Kophen Heat and Alexandria beach, where dozens of leatherbacks nested each night.
All the beaches were destroyed by the tsunami, and though they are forming again, the coast has been completely transformed. Agu, who was at Galathea when the tsunami struck, has an amazing story of survival after 9 days at sea on a log. He is one of the most valued field assistants at ANET now, and helped establish the monitoring programme at Little Andamans.
After post-tsunami surveys had shown that nesting beaches in the Little Andamans were recovering, we decided that it would be easier to initiate a long term monitoring programme there, as the logistics of work in the Nicobars was too challenging. In May 2007, Manish Chandi and I set out by boat from Wandoor (where ANET is) with veteran boatman Saw Uncle Paung and Agu. After a pleasant stop at South Bay, we proceeded to West Bay where the boat nearly capsized when Manish and I were attempting to get off to get to the beach. Unable to bring the boat close enough to get back on, we trekked 15 hours to the next creek through uplifted coral and Ipomea swamps.
With Naveen Namboothri's help, we initiated the monitoring camps at South Bay in 2008 and at West Bay in 2010, where we have focussed our efforts since. Adhith Swaminathan has led the field camps and surveys for several years now, ably assisted by Saw Thesoro (Agu's brother). In the last eight years, we have monitored leatherback and olive ridley nesting at this beach, as well as beach profiles, nest depredation and other parameters. Over the last few years, we also fitted 10 satellite transmitters to leatherback turtles, showing that they migrate east along the coast of Sumatra, some all the way to Western Australia, as well as west to Mozambique and Madagascar.
For more information, click here.
For our papers, click here.
Adhith Swaminathan
