Play all audios:
On a moonlit night in December 1988, crouched on a beach in Chennai, I saw my first olive ridley. We watched the female turtle come ashore, crawl up to a dry part of the beach, dig a 2 feet
deep nest with her hind flippers, and lay 100 to 150 eggs. The hatchlings would emerge about two months later, and under the cover of darkness, make a dash for the sea which they would find
by the reflection of the moon and starlight on the water. The hatchlings drift with oceanic currents, sometimes traversing the entire oceans. When they become adults, 10 to15 years later (up
to 50 years for some species), they use the earth's magnetic field to find the beach where they were born, so that they can start the cycle again. I was then part of a small group of
students who had decided to make a contribution to sea turtle conservation. Sea turtle conservation in India had been initiated a decade and a half earlier in Chennai by Rom Whitaker, Satish
Bhaskar and a small band of turtle walkers, with a hatchery in a friend's backyard. Nearly 20 years later, as some of those hatchlings we released have hopefully reached adulthood, the
group still flourishes, as do many other small ngos throughout India's coasts, including students, communities and animal rights' activists.