Good News :While India is on lock-down, hundreds of thousands of undistributed sea turtles came ashore for the first time in years to lay 60 million eggs

Over 475,000 endangered Olive Ridley sea turtles came ashore to lay 60 million eggs Rushikulya beach this year, as coronavirus lockdown is on

Coronavirus, no doubt, is a killer, with more than 171,796 deaths caused till date. Thanks to the isolation that has been produced to avoid more contagions from the COVID – 19 coronavirus, some animals have taken advantage of walking the streets, swimming where they did not do it before or returning to certain areas.

An example of this is the massive arrival of thousands of sea turtles to empty beaches in India, according to reports from local media and social networks.

The absence of these turtles were observed in 2002, 2007, 2016 and last year too but this spring was the first in seven years that the mass nesting of the species took place at broad daylight.

Without tourists on the beaches, human interference at the nesting site decreased and experts and authorities estimate that the turtles laid around 60 million eggs in the sands of these Indian beaches.These eggs usually take 45 days to hatch.

Protection for turtles

Presently, 25 forest guards and researchers are guarding the beach and the sea, in order to protect these turtles and eggs from other animals, said Rabindranath Sahu, a turtle researcher, who is the secretary of the area’s Rushikulya Sea Turtle Protection Committee (RSTPC)

His team collects the eggs and buries them in fenced hatcheries, so that they incubate safely for two months. Each turtle can lay about 80 to 100 at a time. Now, the nearby villagers also protest these eggs, who, decades back were selling these very eggs, says Sahu.

The Forest Department has set up 11 off-shore camps early this year in order to monitor this beach. Back in 2018, Cyclone Titli hit the Bay of Bengal, the resulting floods left huge amount of waste, spanning about 8 km of the Rushikulya coast, this kept nesting of Olive Ridleys away last year, reported The Hindu

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