An Olive Ridley turtle, tagged with a satellite tracker at Odisha’s Gahirmatha beach, traversed 1,000 kilometers in 51 days, reaching Andhra Pradesh’s coast, a forest official announced.

The turtle, monitored by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), journeyed through waters off Sri Lanka, Puducherry, and Tamil Nadu, highlighting the species’ extraordinary migratory range.

Gahirmatha, in Kendrapara district, is the world’s largest nesting site for Olive Ridleys, where millions gather annually for mass nesting, alongside Rushikulya in Ganjam and Devi river mouth in Puri.

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The Odisha Forest Department tags approximately 3,000 turtles yearly to study their migration, reproduction, and foraging habits. Experts suggest tagging 100,000 turtles for robust data on their biology and routes.

Principal Chief Conservator of Forest Prem Shankar Jha noted this turtle’s journey aligns with a prior case: four years ago, a tagged turtle traveled 3,500 kilometers to nest in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri.

The tagging program, started in 1999, identified turtles off Sri Lanka before a hiatus. Revived by the Zoological Survey of India in 2021, it tagged 12,000 turtles by 2024 at Gahirmatha and Rushikulya. These efforts underscore the need to protect Olive Ridleys’ migratory paths, critical for marine biodiversity, amid growing environmental threats.

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