POINGUINIM: Goa’s flippered friends have kept their annual date with South Goa’s Galgibaga beach, laying the first batch of 135 eggs at 4am on Wednesday.
This is earlier than the first Olive Ridley turtle nest last season, which was laid between December 31, 2019 and January 1.
The first turtle nest at the Galgibaga beach was immediately fenced off, range forest officer Vikramaditya Gaonkar said.
The quiet beach stretch is one of only four turtle nesting sites in Goa, along with Agonda (also in Canacona) and Morjim and Mandrem in Pernem. Efforts to conserve the nesting grounds in Galgibaga for Olive Ridley turtles, a protected species, began in 1999 under the guidance of then parish priest Fr Mariano Goes e Proenca.
Ever since, the northern portion of this beach has earned the nickname of Turtle beach.
A stretch of Galgibaga was included among the four ‘silent zones’ beaches zones declared recently by the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) towards efforts to preserve turtle nesting grounds.
The state receives these flippered visitors from around October to late March-early April each year.
Among turtles, the Olive ridley sea turtle or Lepidochelys olivacea is the smallest in size and most abundant of the sea turtle in the world. This amphibious reptile shuttles between the sea and shoreline and instinctively chooses a supralittoral zone for egg-laying to avoid tidal flush.
Though Goa doesn’t get large numbers like in Odisha, it is significant that these creatures with their round, heart-shaped carapace, have not missed a date with the state’s beaches for decades, even though tourism has increased human activity in Morjim and Galgibaga manifolds over the years.
World over, the species have declined from historic levels and are considered endangered because of their few remaining nesting sites in the world. It is recognized as vulnerable by the IUCN Red list.
Their behaviour of synchronised nesting in mass numbers is known as arribadas and females return to the same beach throughout their lifetime where they first hatched, to lay eggs.
The Olive Ridley turtles are believed to have similarly discovered the Goa’s coastal stretches hundreds of years ago.
One female lays 80 to 120 eggs, sometimes even twice in a season, to increase the hatchlings’ survival rate.