KENDRAPARA: Where do the famous Olive Ridley sea turtles, who visit the Orissa coast twice every year for mass nesting, come from? And where do they go after laying eggs?
Nobody knows for sure.
But a group of scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and state forest officials have joined hands to trace the mysterious path these turtles take around the globe, official said.
Five female turtles, after they had laid eggs, were intercepted by the team in Babubali island along the Gahirmatha coast and fitted with telemetry equipment weighing about two kg.
The exercise took about an hour.
After observing the turtles for sometime to ensure that the gadgets did not cause them discomfort, they were released into the sea, the sources said.
"The experiment is being conducted on about 15 turtles and their path of movement will be minutely observed by the WII scientists," they said.
Knowing the turtles' path of movement would be of much help in the face of protests by conservationists that oil exploration in the Orissa coast could adversely affect marine ecology, a senior official said.
Turtle experts had earlier said that offshore oil drilling might affect the ecology as it was close to the maximum turtle concentration zone.
Though a similar experiment had been attempted in 2001 by employing satellite telemetry, it was not a big success.
Four female turtles fitted with satellite transmitters were released into the sea near the Devi river mouth in Puri district South of Gahirmatha beach - said to be the largest rookery for these turtles, did not go a long distance and were found roaming along the Orissa coast.
One of the four turtles, however, was located near the Jaffna coast in Sri Lanka while two others returned for mass nesting the next year.
The equipment fitted on them also developed snags and the turtles could no more be traced, the sources said.
The satellite telemetry experiment, being taken up as per the recommendation of the multi-disciplinary expert group constituted by the Union environment and forest ministry, was meant to scientifically establish whether the oil drilling block was swarmed by the breeding turtles or not. It would also try to examine the impact of human interference on the turtles and other marine life.
Oil exploring companies had maintained that the turtle congregation zones were near the shore, which was ten nautical miles off the coast.
The off shore drilling would take place beyond 50 nautical miles from the coast which would not affect the turtles, they contended
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