BERHAMPUR: Nearly 90,000 Olive Ridley turtles have laid eggs at the Rushikulya rookery in Ganjam district in the last two days with 79,000 turtles nesting on Monday.
The mass nesting along the 4 km long stretch of the rookery is likely to continue till end of the month and it would surpass previous years, hoped Sunny Khokkar, divisional forest officer (DFO) of Berhampur.
This year, nesting activity started during the day, in a departure from the past when the marine species arrived to lay eggs at night.
Mass nesting already started at Podempeta, while the other major nesting ground, Gahirmatha is yet to witness it, said Rabindranath Sahu, secretary of Rushikulya Samudrika Kaincha Surakhya Samiti.
Anil Mohapatra and Basudev Tripathy, scientists of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), who are tagging and tracking the turtles predict the count during the current season might break records.
The turtles, mainly from Sri Lanka come to Rushikulya in October for mating before nesting in mid-February.
As per Forest department, no mass nesting was observed last year, but 6.37 lakh Olive Ridleys nested during the 2022-23 season at the rookery.