Satish Bhaskar was a pioneer of sea turtle biology and conservation in India, whose body of work provided the baseline for future research at many critical nesting beaches around the country. He started his journey working with Romulus Whitaker at the Madras Snake Park. From the late 1970s onwards, he conducted the first sea turtle surveys along the mainland coast, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep islands. Satish Bhaskar presented a paper on sea turtle conservation in India at the World Conference on the Biology and Conservation of Sea Turtles in 1979. The conference proceedings was published as “Biology and Conservation of Sea Turtles” and remains a landmark document in the history of sea turtle biology.

His groundbreaking surveys, especially in the island groups, uncovered important nesting sites for many species of sea turtles, particularly leatherback and hawksbill turtles in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and green turtles in the Lakshadweep islands. In April 2010, during the 30th Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation in Goa, the International Sea Turtle Society presented him a Sea Turtle Champions Award for his outstanding contributions to sea turtle research through his surveys.

You can read about him here, and there is a compilation of his work here.  His own articles in Hamadryad and elsewhere can be found in the STOI bibliography. Below, we provide excerpts from the book ‘Soup to Superstar’ that touch upon Satish’s life and career.

From Soup to Superstar

Table of Contents

1. Breaking the Surf – ‘The essential turtle walker’
2. Sea Turtles: from Fishe to Flagship – ‘Kachua kababs’
3. Ridleys in the Big Idly – ‘Down memory lane’
4. Islands of Hope – ‘Travels in the islands’ & ‘Engineering surveys in the islands’
5. Islands of Hope – ‘Manjula goes to Galathea’ & ‘The perfect view’

Copyright: Excerpted from ‘From soup to superstar: The story of sea turtle conservation along the Indian coast’ with permission from HarperCollins Publishers.

Citation: Shanker, K. (2015). From soup to superstar: The story of sea turtle conservation along the Indian coast. HarperCollins Publishers.

First published in India in 2015 by Litmus. An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Copyright © Kartik Shanker 2015.

Background Image: Adhith Swaminathan