In the cool wet sand at my feet, an olive Ridley hatchling lies upturned, unmoving. The pale yellow of its underbelly is exposed to the harsh morning sun, to the ghost crabs plucking delicately at the eyes of its many dead conspecifics, to the murder of crows gorging on unhatched eggs nearby.
Just six metres away the sea roars encouragement, beckons with effervescent fingers. The hatchling tilts its head, stirs from its stupor. Its right fore flipper extends towards the sky, its neck arches upwards and backwards, and with a supreme effort it rolls right side up. Then it moves towards the tide. Pulling with fore flippers, pushing with hind. The same determined crawl that has advanced it across the epochs.
FITTER THAN THE DINOS
I am in the Ganjam district of Odisha, at Gokharkuda beach near the Rushikulya river mouth: one of the largest olive Ridley sea turtle nesting sites in the world. About 50 volunteers have been aggregated here this mid-April morning, for the 'Emergency Reponse for Olive Ridley Hatchlings', organised by Wildlife Trust of India and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW-WTI) in concert with the Odisha Forest Department.
Ideally, we wouldn't be needed.
Sea turtles have, after all, withstood the planet's vicissitudes for well over a hundred million years. (The oldest known sea turtle fossil is that of Desmatochelys padillai, an Early Cretaceous species that lived about 120 million years ago.) Ancestral sea turtles brushed off the CretaceousPaleogene mass extinction that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs along with three-fourths of all plant and animal species some 66 million years ago. And we evolutionary noobs, not even haplorrhines when ol' Chicxulub shivered the Earth, now have to help these ancient creatures survive!
In an ideal world we wouldn't be needed. But six of the seven extant sea turtle species are now threatened with extinction according to the IUCN's Red List. Some are deemed 'Critically Endangered'. Even Lepidochelys olivacea, the olive Ridley, understood to be the most abundant sea turtle species, has been declared 'Vulnerable'.
Esta historia es de la edición June 2018 de Sanctuary Asia.
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Esta historia es de la edición June 2018 de Sanctuary Asia.
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