KENDRAPARA: Scientists of Wildlife Institute of India (WII) have fitted satellite transmitters on two female Olive Ridley sea turtles at Gahirmatha marine sanctuary in Kendrapara.
Senior scientist of WII Dr Suresh Kumar said the satellite telemetry project is to track the migratory routes of the marine species. The devices are equipped with temperature sensors and surface time counters to indicate the proportion of time spent on the surface. The data will be received, analysed, and mapped at the WII.
The Forest department and the WII had installed platform transmitter terminals (PTTs) on four turtles at Devi Beach for the first time in April 2001 enabling online tracking of migratory paths. According to the tagging results, just one of the PTT-fitted turtles was observed migrating southward toward Sri Lanka as they circled the seawater.
Unfortunately, all four turtles had stopped transmitting within two to four months, either due to some technical problems or trawler-related mortality, said Dr Basudev Tripathy, a wildlife biologist and the officer in charge, Western Regional Centre of the Zoological Survey of India, Pune.
Thirty turtles were fitted with PTTs by the Forest department in 2007, and many of them moved towards Sri Lanka. Those transmitters also stopped functioning within a year. Research has revealed significant genetic differences between Olive Ridley sea turtles in India and those from Costa Rica, Mexico, Australia, and other countries.
“Our research work showed that the Ridley population in the state is quite different from the turtles of other mass-nesting sites of Costa Rica, Mexico and Australia. Our research demolished the myth that the Olive Ridley sea turtles come from Australia, Costa Rica and other countries from the Pacific ocean for laying eggs at Gahirmatha and Rushikulya,” added Tripathy. Around 6,06,933 Olive Ridley sea turtles laid eggs from March 5 to March 10 on the Nasi-1, Nasi-2, and Eakakulanasi island within Gahirmatha marine sanctuary.