WHY ARE OLIVE RIDLEY TURTLES DYING?

A crisis of conservation & overfishing

- S V KRISHNA CHAITANYA

entangle turtles in large numbers. However, the experts affirm that trawl nets are the primary cause and it is visibly evident. The bulging eyes and swollen necks suggests the turtles died due to drowning. Tamil Nadu Chief Wildlife Warden Rakesh Kumar Dogra confirmed to TNIE, quoting postmortem reports, that turtles are dying due to flooding of their lungs.

Turtle expert K Sivakumar, member of the Marine Protected Areas Commission in IUCN, which radio-tagged about 60 Olive Ridleys in Odisha and Sri Lanka, told TNIE, "I suspect intensive trawling has been done unknowingly in congregation areas, where females and males come together for mating around this time. This might have resulted in mass mortality. If drowning is the cause, there is no doubt turtles are getting entangled in fishing nets and dying."