Tuesdays with Turtles – Hatcheries

Byoliveridley

A little old, but turns out that the WWF is establishing a hatchery for Olive Ridley sea turtles in Orissa.

WWF-India comes with artificial hatchery for Olive Ridley eggs – Newindpress.com

Large-scale destruction of Olive Ridley eggs at nesting sites in the State’s coast has prompted WWF-India to come with an artificial hatchery. It would also double up as a hatching protection centre. The artificial hatchery has been established near mouth of Rushikulya river where WWF-India staff have stored a large number of Olive Ridley eggs along with the arrangements for safe hatching. Last month alone, 116 nests were safeguarded and around 13,000 Olive Ridley eggs were stored in the artificial hatchery. Till end of the week, more than 2,000 eggs have hatched, chairman of WWF-India, Orissa State Committee Saroj Kumar Patnaik said.

Hatcheries become necessary when the natural habitat can no longer be protected. The biggest advantage of a hatchery is the fact that once the eggs are relocated, they are now safe from poaching/predation. But, there are some disadvantages including the resources needed, the possible overcrowding effects if the hatcheries are not well designed, etc. Luckily, there are good resources available for building and managing a good hatchery. With the WWF’s funding and experience, I am sure it will be a very well managed hatchery.

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  • The Olive Ridley Arrives in BC

    Byoliveridley

    No, not me, the sea turtle! When this blog migrated to BC in 2008, it surely didn’t expect the sea turtle it was named after to follow suit, but here we are…

    A species of sea turtle never before seen in B.C. waters arrived on Wickaninnish Beach this week.

    Parks Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and the Vancouver Aquarium worked together to confirm the event as the first-ever sighting of an olive ridley sea turtle in B.C. waters.

    “B.C. residents can be proud to learn that we now officially have three sea turtle species in our waters,” stated a media release from the three organizations involved.

    via Sea turtle found in Pacific Rim park.

    I would quibble with “never before seen”, this is highly unlikely in the many years Canada’s indigenous have made their home on the ocean, and given that turtles tend to stray. It appears this female arrived nearly dead, and died of possible blunt force trauma, which can be caused by many things including propeller hits, boat collisions, etc. Also found, large bits of plastic inside her stomach, which is all too common.

    So, farewell, dear friend, you strayed a bit too far north for your tastes, not as far as Alaska, but far enough.

  • Sea Turtle News of the day, genocide edition

    Byoliveridley

    Depressing as always, but this is a yearly headline around turtle nesting season.

    1,000 Giant Turtles Wash Ashore in India, Bangladesh

    It’s nesting season for the sea turtles of Bangladesh and India, but this year the beaches where the animals lay their eggs are eerily still.

    Nearly a thousand dead turtles have washed ashore along the coasts of both countries in the past few weeks, conservation workers report.

    About 200 dead reptiles have appeared in the past week alone along a single stretch of beach, pictured here, in the Bangladeshi tourist town of Cox’s Bazar (see Bangladesh map).

    A team of scientists visiting the beach on Monday to investigate the mysterious mass deaths concluded that fishing nets were to blame.

    Sea turtles swarming the shores to nest are getting entangled in poorly laid nets and drowning, the experts told Bangladesh’s Financial Express.

    The survival rate of turtle hatchlings is estimated at anywhere between 0.1 and 1%. Assuming 0.5%, this represents 20000 hatchlings. Assuming a hatching success (not all eggs hatch successfully) of about 2/3rds, that is 30,000 eggs, or between 200-250 nests. In my two years of turtle conservation work on an approximately 3 mile stretch of beach, we relocated about a 100 nests. These aren’t the same turtles (they tend to come back to nest very close to where they hatched), but there’s my two seasons of work down the drain and then some!

    Turtle safe fishing is a well researched technology and is not expensive. As I have mentioned before in a similar context, the gaps between the availability of a certain technology and its actual adoption and use are depressingly huge.

    When it comes to serious problems like global warming, all the talk is going to be about the cool science and innovative solutions, but how the technology transfers to India and China, how it is implemented, and the nature of the interactions between the traditional powers and the emerging ones is going to be more critical than the science. Something to remember as a scientist!

  • Tuesdays with Turtles – Triumphant Return

    Byoliveridley

    So, blogging has been light this summer as Olive Ridley’s partner made her way to Canada and is settling in. Also, it is summer in BC and beautiful as hell, so the prospect of sitting down and typing on a computer with brains that are only half working, well, ain’t so hot! Also, Canada is just a much calmer place than the U.S. As I looked back at my many posts, most of them are bitter fulminations against American politics or the various shenanigans of the Emperor. Anyway, I am not under his rule any more, and while he’s gutting the Endangered Species Act as we speak, he will be history soon.

    While Canadian policy debates are equally interesting, they are generally civil in comparison, except the occasional kerfluffle where old white men want their female opponents to go back to making tea, charming…

    Anyway, I felt the blogging itch again and as always, it’s nice to get back with a story about turtles.

    Researchers say they have figured out why sea turtles that normally feed and breed in shallow water or on land will, very rarely, go deep sea diving: the reptiles are on reconnaissance.

    Sea Turtles Dive to Depths for Reconnaissance : Discovery News

    Leatherbacks have amazing diving capabilities and can get up to a kilometre below the surface. Why? for food, of course! More precisely, the promise of future food. Turns out that jellyfish (or jellyfish like animals) hang out in the deep during day time and surface at night. Leatherbacks go looking for them during the daytime down in the deeps so they can get them on the surface for dinner. It’s akin to you taking a leisurely walk around downtown looking for the perfect dinner spot.

    Interesting. As always, very fascinating and sexy creatures, and critically endangered.

    Expect more regularly scheduled blogging just in time for the late summer sweeps!

  • |

    Tuesdays with Turtles – Wednesday Hook Edition

    Byoliveridley

    WWF – Fishing Technology That’s Letting Turtles Off the Hook –

    Turns out that a small change in hook design can save a lot of turtles from getting caught in longline hooks. But the story’s not really about the shape of the hook. I’ve written about this before. The issue is rarely one of technology. The solutions have been developed and exist because a lot of work has gone into developing technological solutions. Implementation on the ground (or sea!) has lagged because it is much harder to effect change where it counts when you attempt to impose technology in a top-down fashion. Small scale fishers (new english here, to avoid the whole fishermen/fisherwoman/fisherperson nonsense, take out the gender specific suffix to every occupation describing verb! – Try it, it’s not weldman, or plumbwoman!) are in a world of hurt with declining fish stocks and widespread fisheries piracy by the so called “developed world”. Without developing and implementing the solution with the full participation of the people who have the most potential to be affected, the change will not be successful.

    What did the WWF do differently this time?

    Together with fishermen we are building a culture for sustainable fishing practices that will guarantee fish stocks in the long term

    They emphasized the people, not the solution. And the results were great, 90% reduction in turtle catch, >95% of the turtles caught were released safely, and the fish yields were not affected. Everyone wins, right?

    Good stuff. Those turtles are still endangered and we’ll run out of wild edible fish in 50 years, but hey, more like this and there’s a bit of hope.

  • |

    Turtles, Arribadas, Science, Policy and Implementation

    Byoliveridley

    turtle Read stuff like this (hat tip to my mom for telling me about this report she’d seen on TV in Madras), and you begin to doubt your utility as a scientist.
    IBNLive : Orissa turtles neck-deep in danger

    Nearly 3,000 Olive Ridley turtles have died off the Orissa coast this season. Beaches have become turtle graveyards.

    Orissa is one of the three places in the world where the Olive Ridleys come for their annual mass nesting.

    Mechanised trawlers are the biggest culprits for this slaughter. When the trawlers go to the sea, turtles are trapped in their fishing nets. The turtles are unable to disentangle themselves and suffocate to death.

    See the video report too. In her own breathlessly indignant style, the reporter explains the science behind turtle excluder devices (well known and established), the regulation expressely forbidding shrimp trawling close to the coast, especially during the arribada, the money set aside in the budget to purchase a few speed boats for the coast guard, who are well aware of the problem, so wot’s, uh, the deal?

    The investigative reports contradict each other, the first one linked said there was no patrolling, the second one gushingly praises the coast guard for vigorous enforcement and patrolling, so which is it? I need to find out, call on some old friends… But clearly, there are issues if net catch mortality is on the rise.

    The three pillars of any regulatory action are the science, the policy, and the implementation. The science here is very clear (though the US administration seems to not think so any more?), shrimp nets with turtle excluder devices cause decrease in mortality. The policy is clear, use these nets when shrimp fishing, and completely ban fishing activity during the arribada (the number of turtles in an arribada, 50000 in a night and perhaps 300000-400000 over the course of a week is staggeringly large, so, shrimp net or not, you’ll kill a lot of turtles just by being there).

    So, like anything else in India, where is the implementation? The people running the trawlers know they are illegal anyway, so they don’t bother with the TEDs. The owners of the trawling boats never face the consequences, only the poor hapless fishermen running the boats. No attempt is made to coopt the people being regulated, it is a top down “we tell you what to do” kind of situation where the law is selectively enforced, no explanations are given, the regulation may just be an excuse to get some kickbacks. The fishermen see the excluder device as an inconvenience as they are not shown how to use it. Some low level bureaucrat in charge of buying high speed boats for the state’s forest service either does not realize the importance of getting this policy on the road, or is on the take. You can pick any, or all of these reasons and you’ll see why just like most other things in India, the road to hell is paved with good intentions 🙁

    Why be a scientist and come up with cool new techniques to do things when you don’t pay equal attention to the implementation of techniques invented 20 years back? As a responsible scientist, I must look at policy and implentation with as much interest and passion as I look at the science – New career paths?