By Nitya Prakash Mohanty | December 28, 2015 | Odisha
It is almost day break. A strong wind blows from the sea towards land. With the moon about to set, a tiny turtle hatchling looks towards the choppy sea and beyond it, towards an ever so bright horizon. The airborne sand hinders its view, as this newly hatched...
By Madhuri Ramesh | October 27, 2015 | Odisha
I spent three ‘turtle seasons’ in Odisha, studying the people who study the turtles and documenting a few other curiosities along the way. This list is about the latter, though I will freely admit that my study itself attracted a fair amount of attention and criticism...
By Nupur Kale | October 22, 2015 | Uncategorized
Prologue: Velas in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra has become famous for its turtle festival or ‘kasav mahotsav’. The festival is a month long affair which usually falls in March but the village starts receiving tourists as soon as the first nest hatches. I began...
By Ridhi Chandarana | October 7, 2015 | Odisha
The best part about being in my line of work is the kind of travelling you get to do. You don’t just visit, you get to live in different places. Unlike tourists, or even seasoned travellers, who focus on the different sites and history of the place, here, you actually...
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...
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