Feb 15, 1999

The death toll rises horrifically as preservation laws fail.

By Ruben Banerjee

The first ominous signs washed up on the shores in a trickle. For some weeks beginning November last year, carcasses would come floating in ones and twos. But in the last two months, it has turned into a deluge with every breaker throwing up telltale remains of a mass-murder that continues unhindered somewhere in the deceptively calm sea.

The Orissa coast -- the world's largest rookery of the endangered Olive Ridley sea turtles -- is now famous for being its biggest grave. Check the figures: in November, the sea washed up 26 dead turtles, in December it was 652 but in January this year, the number shot up to 4,682 carcasses. With the nesting season still on (it lasts till April), the death toll is expected to mount rapidly with experts saying the mortality rate this year could well be an all-time high.

"It's one of the greatest conservation disasters confronting the world," says Bivash Pandav of the Wildlife Institute of India. These senseless killings, however, can be prevented. All it needs is the attachment of turtle-extruder devices (TEDs) costing Rs 5,000 to the fishing nets of trawlers scouring the sea waters just off the Orissa shore. Most of the deaths here are directly related to trawler activity: turtles get stuck in the fishing nets, and rather than release them by cutting the net fishermen break their backs or slit their throats. Though TEDs are mandatory today, nobody enforces the law and as a result nobody follows it.

Last year, Union Environment Minister Suresh Prabhu promised to launch Project Sea Turtle -- with a Rs 5 crore budget and ambitious plans to patrol the coast as well as enforce the TEDs rule. But nothing has happened. Soon, say experts, the huge mortality rates could make the Olive Ridley a mythical turtle in Orissa.

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