Once again we are humbled. We have been extremely fortunate to meet a progressive forward thinking group of individuals spearheaded by a passionate and enthusiastic leader, Dr. Supraja Dharini. After the 6 to 7 hour bus ride Linda and I arrived in Chennai from Bangalore, our goal to meet the Tree Foundation, who works closely with communities on turtle conservation issues, amongst others. We arrived at the bus terminal to find out that the Tree foundation was situated just outside Chennai, unfortunately our phone died and we had no clue where to go.  Gratefully a young lady who lived in Chennai pointed us in the right direction and allowed us to use her phone to get the address we required, great, but the complexity of catching 3 wrong busses with all our gear was challenging. Eventually after been kicked off the bus heading in completely the wrong direction, we managed to locate the correct one, which dropped us on the street where we had to be. Kritika, a young lady from Nepal, who was working with the Tree foundation and staying with Supraja came to meet us on the road side. It was not hard for her, as Linda and I were not blending very well sitting laden with gear on the roadside. Supraja had organized that we stay with her friends, Sharon and Tim, who have been living and working in India for some time now. Sharon and Tim welcomed us into their home and introduced us to their 5 dogs, numerous geckos, bat, the cat, and a few other bits and pieces crawling around the place. We arrived at 5 pm and were planning on joining the team for a turtle walk on the beach starting at 9 pm, no rest for us, something we had gotten used to.

Supraja and her team comb the beaches every night and every morning, starting around 9 pm and 5 am respectively. They search for the Olive Ridley turtles coming up the beach to nest. The turtles move up the beach at night to lay their eggs, before heading back to the sea, during the egg laying process, Supraja and her team can collect data, for example turtle length, width, number of eggs laid, look out for diseases or other ailments, and finally the turtle can be tagged for identification. Our first night we managed to find a single nest, from which we transported the eggs to a hatchery. The hatchery is not a huge building with machines and pumps etc, it is a corned off patch of beach 15m by 10m. The bamboo sidewalls ensure dogs and other predator’s stay out, which greatly increases the chance of turtle hatchling survival. We transported the 120 eggs, which is a normal clutch size for the Olive Ridley from the nest to the hatchery, and filmed the whole event. We did not see a turtle but after 2:30 am we decided to call it quits and hit the sack for 3 or 4 hours in preparation for the action packed days ahead.

From our work with turtles in Gabon, i.e. with the satellite tags and fin tagging, we were able to offer Supraja and her team all the knowledge we had. We conducted a lecture for the team, local fishers from the village, a local marine scientist working on Dugongs and some school kids about the similarities in fisheries management, problems faced and solutions encountered between Africa and India. I also played a few small video clips of our expedition showing the fish markets in Japan and some underwater scenes in Benin. After the discussion I help run through the protocol of attaching a satellite tag onto an Olive Ridley, a procedure that Supraja and her team will be conducting in a few weeks time when they attach the first satellite tags to Olive Ridley turtles in southern India. Supraja works non-stop and she was like a mother to us during our brief time in Chennai. Not only co-coordinating the whole turtle program in Southern India, which not only includes the cooperation of 25 local fishing villages and numerous volunteers, but education awareness programs, flipper festivals, lectures, movies, you name it she has incorporated it into the program. She manages all this, and accommodates us at the last moments notice (1 day) and deals with the unfortunate illness of her mother, Supraja is more like super woman with a zest for life and a passion for nature. We were so happy to help though our network, Andrea our Italian vet supplied us with necropsy manuals for marine mammals, this was incredible as now the team can conduct guided necropsies on dolphins, whales and turtles. Kritika is a vet in training and we hope to get Andrea to Chennai to conduct some workshops on techniques regarding bush style necropsy work. Sara our dear friend with who we slaved in the jungles of Gabon with to attach satellite tags on Olive Ridley’s happily sent us her protocol, which I based the attachment training on, and Aimee, gave us all the details of the costumes and puppets she used in Gabon for the education program. Ultimately in 3 days we have discussed and linked people from all over the world who were interested and keen to provide information and knowledge, which I am so proud about, thanks everyone.

Our last beach walk at night gave us what were looking for, a magnificent Olive Ridley turtle just about to lay her eggs. We had all the cameras and filmed the whole process, including Sapraja and her team doing the work. It was great to see the enthusiasm, and the sheer wonder of biology hinting its secrets as we watched on. Somewhere in India on a beach at midnight watching a turtle nest and then discovering that it was Supraja’s birthday, what a blessing, and what a way to start a birthday. After we Aron and Kritika handed over some chocolates as a birthday present an behalf of the team, Supraja mention that everyday was like a birthday, none more special than the other. Just in case you thought we were joking about the commitment, we found a dead turtle wash up at about 1:15 am. We had managed to get the press photographers from the local newspaper, The Hindu out of bed to capture images and write and article on nesting turtles in Chennai. Once we had found the dead turtle Aron, a volunteer, drove back to the house, fetched the necropsy kit and raced back to the beach, where Supraja and the team completed a full necropsy. The whole process was wrapped up at 3 am, all of us stinking of dead turtle, the unfortunate reality of fishing killing the turtles weighing in hard on the crew.

We had an incredible time with Supraja but as fast as we had arrived it was time to leave, and we thank Supraja not only for the hospitality, and everything you did for us, but also for the lovely clothes you bought us as a present, we really appreciate it. We headed for the train, another 16 hour journey to Kerala, where we would be meeting Father Thomask Kocherry, a father, and activist, a lobbyist who started the world fisheries forum, who went on 3 hunger strikes to protest against foreign trawlers, a man who as passionately worked for over 40 years in fisheries and is a fond believer of community participation to management in fisheries.