The Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has recommenced the exercise to tag the Olive Ridley turtles along the Rushikulya river mouth in Ganjam district for studying the migration route of these endangered marine creatures, who turn up in large numbers for mass nesting in Odisha’s nesting grounds.

“This exercise had recommenced in Odisha in January 2021 after a span of about 25 years and 1556 turtles had been tagged. Yesterday, 22 turtles were tagged in a joint exercise with the Berhampur forest division. We plan to tag 30,000 turtles in the next two years, said Anil Mohapatra, Scientist of ZSI.

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The tags are uniquely numbered and have details such as name of organization, email etc. This will help in finding the extent of travel and location of the turtles after congregation, nesting etc.for further research on turtle behavior, Mohapatra said.

Last time, the Wildlife Institute of India had tagged the turtles in 1996-97 in the Gahirmatha coast. The tagged turtles were later sighted reappearing at the nesting ground. Thus the tagging experiment conducted more than two decades back had provided evidence that the female turtles return to the same beach annually for laying their eggs, where they were born decades ago, said ZSI officials.

The turtles were fitted with metallic flipper tags and the exercise had begun yesterday will continue for the next three months, said ZSI officials

“The ZSI has taken up the project with the State forest department lending logistic support to the project. A total of 30,000 turtles are targeted to be tagged in the ongoing exercise in Gahirmatha, Rushikulya river mouth and Devi river mouth”, said Amlan Nayak, Divisional Forest Officer, Berhampur forest division.

The tagging is being conducted to obtain information on reproductive biology movement. Sea turtles throughout the world are known to migrate thousands of kilometers between their nesting beaches and feeding grounds. The tagging helps in studying the turtle’s migratory route and areas of foraging said ZSI officials.

The Olive turtles turn up in millions for mass nesting along the Odisha coast every year. Gahirmatha beach off Bay of Bengal coast in Kendrapara district is incidentally acclaimed as World’s largest-known nesting ground of these animals. Apart from Gahirmatha, these threatened aquatic animals turn up at Rushikulya river mouth and Devi river mouth for mass nesting, otherwise called arribada.