Satellite-tagged turtles travel 1,000 km to Sri Lankan waters | Bhubaneswar News
Kendrapada: Two satellite-tagged Olive Ridley sea turtles have completed a remarkable 1,000-km journey from Odisha’s Gahirmatha marine sanctuary to waters north of Sri Lanka in just one month, scientists reported Thursday.
The female turtles, tagged on March 12 during their mass-nesting period at Gahirmatha beach, were fitted with platform transmitter terminals (PTT) in a joint initiative by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the forest department.
“We have been monitoring the movements of these satellite-tagged turtles daily. Ocean currents act as highways in the sea, and these turtles are expert navigators who utilise these currents for their journey,” said Dr. Suresh Kumar, senior scientist at WII, Dehradun.
The turtles primarily travel within the Bay of Bengal between Odisha and Sri Lanka, using ocean currents and the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation. Sri Lankan waters have become increasingly attractive to sea turtles since 2017 when the country became Asia’s first to completely ban bottom trawling and destructive trawler nets.
The satellite tracking system works through high-frequency signals sent by the transmitters to polar orbiting weather satellites. Each transmitter has a unique code, allowing scientists to plot the turtles’ migratory routes using latitude and longitude coordinates.
“This isn’t the first such tracking effort in Odisha. Similar initiatives were undertaken in 2001 and 2007, with previous data also showing migration patterns toward Sri Lankan waters,” according to Dr. Basudev Tripathy, wildlife biologist and officer-in-charge at the Zoological Survey of India’s Western Regional Centre in Pune.
The tracking project follows a successful mass-nesting season at Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary, where over 600,000 Olive Ridley sea turtles laid eggs between March 5 to 10 across Nasi-1, Nasi-2, and Eakakulanasi islands.
The female turtles, tagged on March 12 during their mass-nesting period at Gahirmatha beach, were fitted with platform transmitter terminals (PTT) in a joint initiative by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the forest department.
“We have been monitoring the movements of these satellite-tagged turtles daily. Ocean currents act as highways in the sea, and these turtles are expert navigators who utilise these currents for their journey,” said Dr. Suresh Kumar, senior scientist at WII, Dehradun.
The turtles primarily travel within the Bay of Bengal between Odisha and Sri Lanka, using ocean currents and the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation. Sri Lankan waters have become increasingly attractive to sea turtles since 2017 when the country became Asia’s first to completely ban bottom trawling and destructive trawler nets.
The satellite tracking system works through high-frequency signals sent by the transmitters to polar orbiting weather satellites. Each transmitter has a unique code, allowing scientists to plot the turtles’ migratory routes using latitude and longitude coordinates.
“This isn’t the first such tracking effort in Odisha. Similar initiatives were undertaken in 2001 and 2007, with previous data also showing migration patterns toward Sri Lankan waters,” according to Dr. Basudev Tripathy, wildlife biologist and officer-in-charge at the Zoological Survey of India’s Western Regional Centre in Pune.
The tracking project follows a successful mass-nesting season at Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary, where over 600,000 Olive Ridley sea turtles laid eggs between March 5 to 10 across Nasi-1, Nasi-2, and Eakakulanasi islands.
