By Kalyan Varma | April 3, 2015 | Odisha
It was just past midnight. The narrow stretch of beach was deserted, empty. It was not supposed to be — we were there, at that time and in that place, to witness one of nature’s most extraordinary occurrences: the mass nesting of Olive Ridley turtles. The moon had...
By Divya Mudappa | April 2, 2015 | Odisha
It was just another night With a sunset And a moonrise not so far behind To give us just enough light To lay down underneath the stars Listen to all the translations Of the stories across the sky We drew our own oonstellationsmmun ~ Jack Johnson,...
By Mallika Sardeshpande | | Odisha
The coast appeared from under the clouds on the horizon rather abruptly. The waves were but thin white lines on the narrow shore. As the plane descended over the Bay of Bengal, the blue ocean began to get a texture. And just as it began landing in Vizag, I could see...
By Akash Verma | April 7, 2014 | Uncategorized
You are supposed to start with a turtle track, maybe a nest or the remains of the eggs. You are then supposed to move on to seeing a live olive ridley turtle and then an arribada. That’s the progression to studying the turtles; but here I was, surrounded by thousands...
By Muralidharan M. | April 3, 2014 | Muralidharan M.
Every field ecologist has their own special “Man Friday”, the local informant and trusted field assistant at their respective field sites. Dhambru Behera was “The Man” at the Rushikulya mass nesting beach in Odisha. This humble, traditional fisherman by trade met a...
By Maya Khosla | March 3, 2013 | Maya Khosla, Odisha
It is 3:00 p.m. on February 15. You are framing a snapshot of the arribada, the annual mass nesting of olive ridley sea turtles. The shot is perfect—except that a figure stands tall as an icon, right there in the middle of your frame. The figure is Rabi, Rabindranath...By Maya Khosla | February 22, 2013 | Maya Khosla, Muralidharan M., Odisha, Uncategorized
Surender, a third assistant, keeps his eyes on a GPS unit. As soon as he hears a new sea turtle sighting announced, he calls out the position coordinates. Sitting on a work bench next to him, Muralidharan (“Murali”), one of Kartik Shanker’s researchers, notes down all...
By Andrea D. Phillott | July 9, 2012 | Andrea D. Phillott
As the summers went by and my knowledge of sea turtle biology grew, I became most fascinated with what we didn’t yet know about sea turtles. Observing hatchlings as they entered the ocean, I wondered where their swimming frenzy would take them. The time between their...
By Maya khosla | May 31, 2012 | Maya Khosla, Odisha
It is a few minutes past 7:00 a.m. on April 24, 2012. After an all-night patrol for sea turtles along Devi Beach, Sovakar Behera walks purposefully through a Casuarina grove, towards the not-too-distant boom of waves. Rita Banerji and I follow him out of the man-made...
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