Working with sea turtles in India

February 2015 was a poignant time. I joined the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore as an intern. The sea turtle project at Dr Kartik Shanker's lab runs in collaboration with the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Dakshin Foundation among others. For a Skype interview with Dr Shanker and Muralidharan, I was draped in a sari (having just returned from my friend’s wedding). On my first day at work, I found out that this had intimidated them as their sartorial choice tends towards the practical shorts and shirt. I spent my first few days on the job learning about the project, and made this poster:

Original size poster here

I also sought accommodation closer to work to save me 36km and some hours on buses between south and north Bangalore. By the time I found a decent place 10 minutes away, I was to leave for our field station in Odisha to help out with the arribada – the annual mass nesting of olive ridley sea turtles.

Rushikonda, Vizag at dawn

In the next two days, I was off to Ganjam, first on a plane and then on a train. I arrived at the field station around 10pm and was whisked away to witness the bonanza. The week was spent in nocturnal frenzy, counting all things turtle and trying hard to sleep in the day. It was magical! More here. After the nesting was over, Nupur, a research assistant and I went to Visakhapatnam to organize the annual Turtle Action Group workshop. It struck me as a big responsibility and I wanted to validate this entrustment. The workshop went smoothly and I made many new contacts working on coastal conservation. Good fortune (and goodwill) took me back to Visakhapatnam two weeks later as a representative for the Turtle Action Group at the Government of India-UNDP workshop on addressing sea turtle mortality. All the eminent folk involved in coastal conservation were present. It was one very insightful experience that also served to mould my aspirations to an extent. I thank KS for this opportunity.

Rushikonda, Vizag at midday

All this was between working on the website (seaturtlesofindia.org), a bibliography of sea turtle literature and administrative tasks. In June, we started dissecting turtle hatchling samples. Those dissection skills I had enthusiastically accrued over the past five years were jubilantly put to use. We had individually and collectively questioned the nature of these dissections – they felt so necessary and practical, yet would we ever actually use these methods? With our professors explaining that the cockroaches and mice were pests, the earthworms and snails were abundantly cultured and the fish were market surplus, we had concluded that it was simply ideal practice in our learning pathway. And here I was, harvesting immature gonads to determine the sex ratio of the emergent population. The turtle hatchlings dissected are the ones found dead on the beach due to natural mortality (survival rate is 2-5% per nest). Turtles take 10-30 years to mature and even adults do not show distinct sexual dimorphism, so one has to practically cut open a dead turtle/endoscope a live one to figure out the sex.

A couple of samples per nest are collected every year. These are meticulously labeled from the dead hatchling to the slide under the microscope. One has to harvest the gonads of every hatchling, take a tissue sample, process it, embed and section it, stain and fix it and identify the sex under the microscope by looking at the oviducts/semeniferous tubules. Why is this useful? Because looking at the sex ratio every year over a long period will tell us if climate change is affecting the population. The sex of hatchlings is determined by the environmental temperature (warmer=females). After over a month of furious lab work, sexing was complete.

This was around the time my funding took priority and I’d frequently abscond from the workplace but work from home on the annual project report. Shuttling frenetically between banks, cities and interviews was all part of the process and thankfully I was afforded the luxury of flexible work. Kartik Shanker gave me his book to proofread, which was a delight! By the end of my tenure I’d met some really awesome colleagues that inspired me!!

All the Ms (l-r): Meera, Mahima, Madhavi, Murali, Marianne, Madhuri, me

The book, and KS's kind kind words

Pictures: My mother