Bioluminescence
Five M Tech students from Andhra University, enjoying a night drive along Visakhapatnam’s Bheemili Beach in April, stumbled upon rare blue waves. Intrigued, they waited on the shores, capturing the phenomenon on video. Shared on Twitter by Sai Kiran, known as Vizag Weatherman, the videos quickly went viral. Thanks to the students’ shared experience, the public got a glimpse of the rare event, marking its first appearance in Andhra Pradesh.
Leopard mauls 6-yr-old
On August 11, a six-year-old girl was fatally attacked by a leopard while trekking with her parents along the Alipiri footpath to Tirumala. This was the first reported death due to a leopard attack on this route. The next day, authorities discovered the girl’s half-eaten body near the seventh mile of the footpath. Since then, the forest department has trapped five leopards in the Tirumala region. On June 22, another six-year-old survived a leopard attack in the same area.
Bryde’s whale carcasses
While Bryde’s whales died on the Srikakulam coast, a leatherback sea turtle was rescued. Within four months, carcasses of two Bryde’s whales washed ashore along the Srikakulam coast on July 27 and November 18. Necropsy on the first revealed starvation as the cause, while the second had no external marks of injury, so it could have died by natural causes. Recurring incidents suggest a significant Bryde’s whale population and the need for conservation.
Cyclone Michaung
Cyclone Michaung in December caused extensive damage. Baptla recorded a loss of approximately 93,000 hectares of crops. A whopping 1.30 lakh acres of paddy fields in Kakinada and Dr B R Ambedkar Konaseema districts were destroyed, while 42,179 hectares in Krishna and 58,000 hectares in Chittoor were affected.
