Odisha performs satellite tagging on six Olive Ridley Sea Turtles

Bhubaneswar, Dec 24 (PTI) As part of its conservation measures, the Odisha government has performed satellite tagging on six Olive Ridley Sea Turtles at Gahirmatha marine sanctuary in Kendrapara district by Wednesday, a top forest official said.

Plans are afoot to do the same to three more turtles at the Rushikulya river mouth in Ganjam district in near future.

“This will give vital information on near-shore movement patterns and would help the government in bringing policies for the conservation of Olive Ridley Sea Turtles as well as the betterment of all stakeholders, including the local fishing communities,” the official said.

Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) & Chief Wildlife Warden, PK Jha, said the satellite tagging was done as per the decisions taken in the last High Power Committee Meeting held on December 17.

“It was decided to do satellite tagging in nine of Olive Ridley sea turtles — four males and five females — to continue with the good work done by Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, during the previous years,” he said.

Jha said six turtles — three males and three females — have been tagged at Gahirmatha beach between December 21 and 24.

The rest three turtles will be tagged in the Rushikulya river mouth, another major nesting site of the turtles.

Jha claimed that Odisha has led the country in Olive Ridley Sea Turtle conservation, for which Satellite telemetry studies on them commenced in early 2001.

He said this marked a significant advancement from beach-based monitoring to ocean-scale ecological research to know the long distance movement pattern.

These studies were undertaken by the Wildlife Institute of India, in collaboration with the Odisha Forest Department.

The official said that in 2024, as per the decisions taken in the High Power Committee held, it was decided to re-initiate the satellite telemetry programme on Olive Ridley Sea Turtles in the Odisha coast to know the near-shore movement pattern and beach dynamics.

Accordingly, as per the tri-partite MoU executed between the PCCF (Wildlife) & CWLW, Odisha, the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun and the Dhamra Port Co Ltd. (DPCL), two turtles were tagged with satellite tags to study the movement & nesting habitat dynamics.

Jha noted that of the two turtles, one exhibited near-shore movements around Wheeler Island, Babubali Island and the adjacent spit, before moving north of the Gahirmatha rookery. The satellite tag got detached and was later found within the mangrove habitat of Bhitarkanika, with the last location on April 1, 2025.

However, the Turtle -2 undertook a long migratory journey. It initially moved eastward into the open ocean, subsequently approached near shore waters off Tamil Nadu and later travelled southward towards waters east of Sri Lanka, Jha said.

He said the tagging is made to know Olive Ridley turtle movement patterns, to identify their critical habitats, reduce threats like fishing by catch, design effective Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) that follow their wide-ranging movements, and understand their life cycle (feeding, breeding).

It was also required to form policies to protect them from human activities such as coastal development and plastic pollution, especially since they are highly migratory and use vast, often international, ocean areas.

Previously, the Olive Ridley Sea Turtles were being tagged with flipper tags to know the turtles which were again coming back to the Odisha coast for mass nesting. But, the tagging was not covering the actual movement paths along with other essential details, the official said. PTI AAM NN