A half century of sea turtle conservation
Originally published in Roundglass Sustain, February 2020. Click here for the visually appealing version.
The year 1969 was momentous. It marked the end of an iconic decade. Woodstock happened. Neil Armstrong landed on the moon (or at a film set in Arizona). The Beatles gave their last live performance. In India, Romulus Whitaker started the Snake Park on the outskirts of Chennai (then Madras) which would lead to the first efforts towards sea turtle conservation in India, when a few enthusiasts got together and started conducting turtle walks on the Chennai coast. I was born that year as well, but I had little to offer to the discourse on sea turtle conservation that was beginning to gather momentum globally.
In the 1960s, wildlife conservation and environmental issues started to become more prominent. Stalwarts like Archie Carr in the Americas, George Hughes in South Africa and Robert Bustard and Colin Limpus in Australia would start sea turtle research and conservation programmes that continue till today. Carr, the pioneer of sea turtle conservation globally, established the Marine Turtle Specialist Group in 1966.
Still, in the 1970s, marine turtles were often referred to within a fisheries framework in India. E.G. Silas, the director of the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute wrought a major change by focussing attention on the conservation of marine endangered species, including research on olive ridley turtles. In 1977, the five sea turtle species found in India had been included in Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act, and by the end of the decade, they were firmly a conservation icon. I was then 10, and playing frequently on Elliot’s beach in Chennai, not far from where my grandfather lived. None of us had heard of olive ridleys, and though aforementioned grandfather saw a nesting turtle during one of his evening walks, he didn’t consider it remarkable or interesting enough to tell the family about it at the time.
The turtle walks that Rom Whitaker had started in the early 70s attracted another iconic figure. Satish Bhaskar, an IIT drop-out made sea turtles his thing and spent the next 20 years surveying the entire coast of India, and remote islands in the Andaman and Nicobars, and Lakshadweep for sea turtles. His body of work provided the baseline for future research at many critical nesting beaches around the country. Efforts of conservationists and the forest department, aided by the timely intervention of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, greatly reduced the number of Orissa’s turtles that were making their way to the meat markets of Kolkata.
By the time I turned 20, olive ridleys were better known to the youth of Chennai. Like an actor in niche cinema. WWF and other NGOs conducted turtle walks regularly for school and college students, and as a student of Madras Christian College, I got sucked into it as well. We started the Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network in 1988, which is still active thirty years later.
The 1990s was the decade of citizen movements for sea turtle conservation. Inspired by or just similar to SSTCN, NGOs sprung up in various parts of the country, including Theeram, a collection of fishermen and their friends in a fishing village in Kerala, the VSPCA in Vishakapatnam, and a variety of other groups. The trawler-related mortality of olive ridleys in Orissa became Page 3 news, and by the time the Super-Cyclone hit Orissa in 1999, sea turtle conservation had become a national priority. After a hiatus from sea turtles for a few years, which I spent on a PhD on small mammals, I celebrated my 30th year by returning to research on sea turtles, in particular on olive ridley turtles. Modern techniques such as genetics were helping define populations, and providing evidence for natal homing (that sea turtles return to the beaches where they were born to nest), while satellite telemetry was helping track the migratory routes of turtles.
In the 2000s, several long-term monitoring and research programmes were initiated in India, mirroring initiatives in other parts of the world. Dakshin Foundation initiated monitoring of olive ridleys in Orissa and leatherbacks in the Andaman Islands, while the Nature Conservation Foundation started their work on green turtles in the Lakshadweep Islands. In 2010, we conducted the International Sea Turtle Society’s 30th Annual Symposium in Goa. It was only the second time it was being held in Asia, and attracted over 500 participants from around the world. The theme of the symposium was “The World of Sea Turtles” and meant to draw attention to the fact that we needed to conserve habitats and ecosystems, and not just the turtles themselves. That we should use them as flagships for a broader conservation ethic, and not be sucked into a narrow focus on species.
Fast forward another 10 years. Simple math suggests I’ve turned 50. Another change has come about in the sea turtle world. At the annual symposium in Japan in 2018, we host a panel on “Beyond Protection of Sea Turtles”. Globally, many sea turtle populations have recovered and are believed to be stable or even increasing. Leatherback and olive ridley turtles are now listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (earlier they were listed as Critically Endangered and Endangered), and many green turtle populations are as abundant as they’ve been in the last half century. Two sea turtle biologists refer to them as cucaracha (cockroaches). What a come down for species that were accorded the highest pedestal alongside pandas and rhinos and tigers.
Or is it a come down? In fact, sea turtle conservation has been incredibly successful. There really are millions of olive ridleys nesting at beaches in Orissa, Mexico and Costa Rica. A few years back, we counted over 400,000 ridleys at a single mass nesting event (arribada) in Rushikulya, and Mexico gets even more. There are huge numbers nesting in Ostional, Costa Rica, despite (or perhaps because of) a community-based egg harvest programme. When are we going to stop beating our breasts about the imminent extinction of these animals and acknowledge that we might need to revise our conservation goals. Many communities could benefit greatly from sustainable harvest of eggs or adults.
Surely, there are threats that we need to be concerned about. Coastal development — including ports and harbours — which leads to the erosion and loss of nesting beaches is the biggest one. Climate change can lead to loss of beaches through extreme events and sea level rise, but can also affect sex ratios as temperature determines sex in sea turtle embryonic development. Trawl-fishing still kills tens of thousands of turtles worldwide, but probably has an even worse impact on near shore marine ecosystems, and needs to be regulated or phased out.
Thanks to all the attention, the average reasonably well-read citizen now knows that sea turtles exist, and that they are endangered in some fashion. Everybody I meet asks how the turtles are, like they are enquiring after a sick relative. But, a half century after sea turtles wormed their way into our collective consciousness, we may need to start thinking about them a bit differently. Perhaps sustainable use has the best outcomes for people, turtles and ecosystems in some places. Their own remarkable lifestyles, the diversity of habitats they occupy, the ocean basins they traverse can serve as a metaphor for the approaches we adopt for their conservation. It is time we embraced diverse actions, which include an acknowledgement of the ways in which human societies around the world have interacted with these amazing creatures for thousands of years.
The year 1969 was momentous. It marked the end of an iconic decade. Woodstock happened. Neil Armstrong landed on the moon (or at a film set in Arizona). The Beatles gave their last live performance. In India, Romulus Whitaker started the Snake Park on the outskirts of Chennai (then Madras) which would lead to the first efforts towards sea turtle conservation in India, when a few enthusiasts got together and started conducting turtle walks on the Chennai coast. I was born that year as well, but I had little to offer to the discourse on sea turtle conservation that was beginning to gather momentum globally.
In the 1960s, wildlife conservation and environmental issues started to become more prominent. Stalwarts like Archie Carr in the Americas, George Hughes in South Africa and Robert Bustard and Colin Limpus in Australia would start sea turtle research and conservation programmes that continue till today. Carr, the pioneer of sea turtle conservation globally, established the Marine Turtle Specialist Group in 1966.
Still, in the 1970s, marine turtles were often referred to within a fisheries framework in India. E.G. Silas, the director of the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute wrought a major change by focussing attention on the conservation of marine endangered species, including research on olive ridley turtles. In 1977, the five sea turtle species found in India had been included in Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act, and by the end of the decade, they were firmly a conservation icon. I was then 10, and playing frequently on Elliot’s beach in Chennai, not far from where my grandfather lived. None of us had heard of olive ridleys, and though aforementioned grandfather saw a nesting turtle during one of his evening walks, he didn’t consider it remarkable or interesting enough to tell the family about it at the time.
The turtle walks that Rom Whitaker had started in the early 70s attracted another iconic figure. Satish Bhaskar, an IIT drop-out made sea turtles his thing and spent the next 20 years surveying the entire coast of India, and remote islands in the Andaman and Nicobars, and Lakshadweep for sea turtles. His body of work provided the baseline for future research at many critical nesting beaches around the country. Efforts of conservationists and the forest department, aided by the timely intervention of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, greatly reduced the number of Orissa’s turtles that were making their way to the meat markets of Kolkata.
By the time I turned 20, olive ridleys were better known to the youth of Chennai. Like an actor in niche cinema. WWF and other NGOs conducted turtle walks regularly for school and college students, and as a student of Madras Christian College, I got sucked into it as well. We started the Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network in 1988, which is still active thirty years later.
The 1990s was the decade of citizen movements for sea turtle conservation. Inspired by or just similar to SSTCN, NGOs sprung up in various parts of the country, including Theeram, a collection of fishermen and their friends in a fishing village in Kerala, the VSPCA in Vishakapatnam, and a variety of other groups. The trawler-related mortality of olive ridleys in Orissa became Page 3 news, and by the time the Super-Cyclone hit Orissa in 1999, sea turtle conservation had become a national priority. After a hiatus from sea turtles for a few years, which I spent on a PhD on small mammals, I celebrated my 30th year by returning to research on sea turtles, in particular on olive ridley turtles. Modern techniques such as genetics were helping define populations, and providing evidence for natal homing (that sea turtles return to the beaches where they were born to nest), while satellite telemetry was helping track the migratory routes of turtles.
In the 2000s, several long-term monitoring and research programmes were initiated in India, mirroring initiatives in other parts of the world. Dakshin Foundation initiated monitoring of olive ridleys in Orissa and leatherbacks in the Andaman Islands, while the Nature Conservation Foundation started their work on green turtles in the Lakshadweep Islands. In 2010, we conducted the International Sea Turtle Society’s 30th Annual Symposium in Goa. It was only the second time it was being held in Asia, and attracted over 500 participants from around the world. The theme of the symposium was “The World of Sea Turtles” and meant to draw attention to the fact that we needed to conserve habitats and ecosystems, and not just the turtles themselves. That we should use them as flagships for a broader conservation ethic, and not be sucked into a narrow focus on species.
Fast forward another 10 years. Simple math suggests I’ve turned 50. Another change has come about in the sea turtle world. At the annual symposium in Japan in 2018, we host a panel on “Beyond Protection of Sea Turtles”. Globally, many sea turtle populations have recovered and are believed to be stable or even increasing. Leatherback and olive ridley turtles are now listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (earlier they were listed as Critically Endangered and Endangered), and many green turtle populations are as abundant as they’ve been in the last half century. Two sea turtle biologists refer to them as cucaracha (cockroaches). What a come down for species that were accorded the highest pedestal alongside pandas and rhinos and tigers.
Or is it a come down? In fact, sea turtle conservation has been incredibly successful. There really are millions of olive ridleys nesting at beaches in Orissa, Mexico and Costa Rica. A few years back, we counted over 400,000 ridleys at a single mass nesting event (arribada) in Rushikulya, and Mexico gets even more. There are huge numbers nesting in Ostional, Costa Rica, despite (or perhaps because of) a community-based egg harvest programme. When are we going to stop beating our breasts about the imminent extinction of these animals and acknowledge that we might need to revise our conservation goals. Many communities could benefit greatly from sustainable harvest of eggs or adults.
Surely, there are threats that we need to be concerned about. Coastal development — including ports and harbours — which leads to the erosion and loss of nesting beaches is the biggest one. Climate change can lead to loss of beaches through extreme events and sea level rise, but can also affect sex ratios as temperature determines sex in sea turtle embryonic development. Trawl-fishing still kills tens of thousands of turtles worldwide, but probably has an even worse impact on near shore marine ecosystems, and needs to be regulated or phased out.
Thanks to all the attention, the average reasonably well-read citizen now knows that sea turtles exist, and that they are endangered in some fashion. Everybody I meet asks how the turtles are, like they are enquiring after a sick relative. But, a half century after sea turtles wormed their way into our collective consciousness, we may need to start thinking about them a bit differently. Perhaps sustainable use has the best outcomes for people, turtles and ecosystems in some places. Their own remarkable lifestyles, the diversity of habitats they occupy, the ocean basins they traverse can serve as a metaphor for the approaches we adopt for their conservation. It is time we embraced diverse actions, which include an acknowledgement of the ways in which human societies around the world have interacted with these amazing creatures for thousands of years.
Snapshots of a decade
Originally published in a collection 'The story of us' in Fountain Ink
The decade starts with a sombre realisation. At 40, I can no longer beat my long-time adversary in our one on one basketball games. Well, he is 10 years younger, but still. It’s an interesting time. You’re no longer young, and you’re stressed by having to achieve something in the prime of your career.
After two republican terms, the US had just elected its first black President. Charismatic, liberal and down to earth, President Obama was a beacon of hope for the entire liberal world. Irrelevant (or maybe not), he was pretty darn good at basketball too. In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was leading the government for the second consecutive term. Despite setbacks, the world seemed to be moving inexorably towards greater democracy, more liberal outlooks and greater rationality. We were so wrong.
Life in science goes on. We describe many new species, in fact new genera, of frogs (including a wonderful starry frog called Astrobatrachus kurichiyana), lizards and snakes. We develop new theories about mixed species groups of animals. We track leatherbacks all the way to Western Australia in one direction, and to Madagascar and Mozambique on the other. I learn to scuba dive, and decide to adopt marine biology to fuel the addiction.
Over the course of the decade, the world, having feinted left, swung right. Trump in the USA, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Johnson in the UK, Modi in India. Not to mention Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Israel, the Philippines. Consequently, there has been a surge in anti-immigration policies, discrimination and increasing inequity, threatening the social and economic fabric of many societies. From climate change denial to rabidly pro-industry policies, these governments have posed an equal or greater threat to environment in general. But, as liberals, we messed up too, believing that rational argument alone was sufficient to change the world. All conversations simply became more polarised, no dialogue seems possible anymore.
In the late 2000s, we start several exciting initiatives. Current Conservation, a magazine that aims to bring conservation science to lay persons, becomes a platform for art and science. Its distinctive artwork and design begins to draw attention from around the world. We start Dakshin Foundation to work on natural resource management and conservation in coastal and marine ecosystems. We manage the Andaman and Nicobar Environment Team, the islands’ leading NGO and platform for research.
Oddly enough, in the middle of a global identity crisis, most wildlife has flourished, including in India. Perhaps because of the measures put in place since the 1960s. Elephants, tigers, bears, boar, you name it. There are more leopards in the country than at any time in the last few decades. And not just in forests, but in towns, in sugarcane fields, even in the suburbs of Mumbai. There is a gaur in every garden in the Nilgiris. Climate change, habitat loss and other threats loom, but many wild populations are increasing. And with it, conflict.
In the 2000s, we feared the imminent decline of olive ridley turtles, and continued campaigns for their conservation. Ten years of monitoring later, we believe they are stable or increasing (despite unnecessary fishery related deaths) with several hundred thousand nesting at mass nesting events in Odisha. So many sea turtle populations around the world have increased that some conservationists have started to ask ‘How much is enough?’.
I write some books. ‘From Soup to Superstar’ is an account of the history of sea turtle conservation in India. It traces our interactions with these animals from the time we treated them as resources to their transformation into global icons of conservation. I conduct interviews with many pioneers of conservation, and learn much about the inside stories and politics of the early days of conservation in India. I join a revolution in children’s writing in India with my first novel, ‘Lori’s magical mystery’, with a small primate and a clever bird as its protagonists. Last but not the least, ‘Moonlight and the Sea’, a picture book about a little girl in the Lakshadweep is published.
At the same time, perhaps in keeping with the politics of our time, and at complete odds with the evidence, extreme movements in conservation have taken hold. One is called compassionate conservation, and opposes killing of wild animals for any reason whatsoever. Even when those animals are abundant and could provide protein for the poor. Even when those animals are destroying crops or killing people. Anything but compassionate, this flies in the face of sustainability, scientific evidence, cultural pluralism and of humanity itself. How can something that purports to have a noble goal be so misconcieved. But then there is religion.
The decade ends well for me. I return from my administrative job as the director of large environmental NGO to my academic position. I am described as annoyingly happy. At 50, I feel as carefree as the graduate students, but I have no worries about exams or career or job. I can see how that might be annoying. I’ve started to play basketball again; I am no pushover, but I care less that the kids are running circles around me. I worry about the world becoming less liberal and somehow less literate despite education, but as Dylan Thomas said, we must rage against the dying of the light. In the meantime, there is joy to be found in science, in music, in sports. That will keep us going.
The decade starts with a sombre realisation. At 40, I can no longer beat my long-time adversary in our one on one basketball games. Well, he is 10 years younger, but still. It’s an interesting time. You’re no longer young, and you’re stressed by having to achieve something in the prime of your career.
After two republican terms, the US had just elected its first black President. Charismatic, liberal and down to earth, President Obama was a beacon of hope for the entire liberal world. Irrelevant (or maybe not), he was pretty darn good at basketball too. In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was leading the government for the second consecutive term. Despite setbacks, the world seemed to be moving inexorably towards greater democracy, more liberal outlooks and greater rationality. We were so wrong.
Life in science goes on. We describe many new species, in fact new genera, of frogs (including a wonderful starry frog called Astrobatrachus kurichiyana), lizards and snakes. We develop new theories about mixed species groups of animals. We track leatherbacks all the way to Western Australia in one direction, and to Madagascar and Mozambique on the other. I learn to scuba dive, and decide to adopt marine biology to fuel the addiction.
Over the course of the decade, the world, having feinted left, swung right. Trump in the USA, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Johnson in the UK, Modi in India. Not to mention Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Israel, the Philippines. Consequently, there has been a surge in anti-immigration policies, discrimination and increasing inequity, threatening the social and economic fabric of many societies. From climate change denial to rabidly pro-industry policies, these governments have posed an equal or greater threat to environment in general. But, as liberals, we messed up too, believing that rational argument alone was sufficient to change the world. All conversations simply became more polarised, no dialogue seems possible anymore.
In the late 2000s, we start several exciting initiatives. Current Conservation, a magazine that aims to bring conservation science to lay persons, becomes a platform for art and science. Its distinctive artwork and design begins to draw attention from around the world. We start Dakshin Foundation to work on natural resource management and conservation in coastal and marine ecosystems. We manage the Andaman and Nicobar Environment Team, the islands’ leading NGO and platform for research.
Oddly enough, in the middle of a global identity crisis, most wildlife has flourished, including in India. Perhaps because of the measures put in place since the 1960s. Elephants, tigers, bears, boar, you name it. There are more leopards in the country than at any time in the last few decades. And not just in forests, but in towns, in sugarcane fields, even in the suburbs of Mumbai. There is a gaur in every garden in the Nilgiris. Climate change, habitat loss and other threats loom, but many wild populations are increasing. And with it, conflict.
In the 2000s, we feared the imminent decline of olive ridley turtles, and continued campaigns for their conservation. Ten years of monitoring later, we believe they are stable or increasing (despite unnecessary fishery related deaths) with several hundred thousand nesting at mass nesting events in Odisha. So many sea turtle populations around the world have increased that some conservationists have started to ask ‘How much is enough?’.
I write some books. ‘From Soup to Superstar’ is an account of the history of sea turtle conservation in India. It traces our interactions with these animals from the time we treated them as resources to their transformation into global icons of conservation. I conduct interviews with many pioneers of conservation, and learn much about the inside stories and politics of the early days of conservation in India. I join a revolution in children’s writing in India with my first novel, ‘Lori’s magical mystery’, with a small primate and a clever bird as its protagonists. Last but not the least, ‘Moonlight and the Sea’, a picture book about a little girl in the Lakshadweep is published.
At the same time, perhaps in keeping with the politics of our time, and at complete odds with the evidence, extreme movements in conservation have taken hold. One is called compassionate conservation, and opposes killing of wild animals for any reason whatsoever. Even when those animals are abundant and could provide protein for the poor. Even when those animals are destroying crops or killing people. Anything but compassionate, this flies in the face of sustainability, scientific evidence, cultural pluralism and of humanity itself. How can something that purports to have a noble goal be so misconcieved. But then there is religion.
The decade ends well for me. I return from my administrative job as the director of large environmental NGO to my academic position. I am described as annoyingly happy. At 50, I feel as carefree as the graduate students, but I have no worries about exams or career or job. I can see how that might be annoying. I’ve started to play basketball again; I am no pushover, but I care less that the kids are running circles around me. I worry about the world becoming less liberal and somehow less literate despite education, but as Dylan Thomas said, we must rage against the dying of the light. In the meantime, there is joy to be found in science, in music, in sports. That will keep us going.
