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...
By Kartik Shanker | May 22, 2012 | Kartik Shanker
One million nests a year at La Escobilla in Mexico. Compared to ridley nesting beaches on the west coast of India or the east coast of Africa that get 10 nests per year, that number sounds astronomical. Or for that matter, when compared to the much touted mass nesting...
By Mathew H. Godfrey | May 8, 2012 | Matthew H. Godfrey, North Carolina
As in most cases, it started with a phone call. Somebody saw a sea turtle, washed up on some rocks along a town creek near the ocean. This time, the location is close: just down the street from my home, so it takes only five minutes to get to the turtle spot....
By Ema Fatima | May 2, 2012 | Ema Fatima, Odisha
After ceaseless attempts for three successive years, I finally made it just on the day of peak mass hatching this year. In 2010, I left for Rushikulya as soon as I got the news that mass hatching event had started, trying my luck to visualize this epic event in my...
By Kartik Shanker | March 30, 2012 | Kartik Shanker, Lakshadweep
The male green turtle with a small hole in his carapace swam ahead of us in the Kavaratti lagoon without the least concern about our presence. Bharti, my Ph.D. student, and I followed him for nearly half an hour. Male green turtles are known to make amorous advances...
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