environment
Bright lights. Loud music. Floodlights: the moon’s benign light isn’t good enough. A weekend beach party in full swing. To the south of the beach house lies the tranquil Arabian sea; to the north the harsh and unbroken line of vacation homes stretching for miles along Turtle Beach at Hawkes Bay, on the coast of Karachi.
I arrived at the Sindh Wildlife Department’s Marine Turtle conservation Unit at Hawkes Bay in the hope of witnessing a green turtle’s egg-laying process. A recent article in Dawn by wildlife filmmakers, Ahmer Ali Rizvi and Heba Moeen, had alerted me about the plight of green turtles. I had learnt:
Green sea turtles are some of the biggest turtles and can live up to an age of 70. The female lays up to 110 eggs in each clutch during September-February. The mother takes almost two hours to find a safe spot in the sand, then digs a hole, lays her eggs and crawls back to sea, exhausted. Green turtles are called green because of their green blubber. The chances of survival of the hatchlings is one in 1000. The adult green turtle, known as the ocean-sweeper, is a herbivore, surviving on sea vegetation and algae.
Tourist beaches, irresponsible construction, cars, lights, poachers, fishing nets and trawlers, all hamper the chances of mommy turtles laying their eggs successfully and their hatchlings surviving. Once she lays them her eggs can be eaten by natural predators, like dogs and snakes. The hatchlings, upon reaching the sea, can also become an aquatic predator’s meal.
The beach looked quite clean as we waited for sunset. The turtles only come out at night when they feel safe enough. Walking along the beach, we picked up carelessly tossed out plastic and Styrofoam litter. Hard to believe there had been a beach clean-up drive just the previous day. After sunset, thick smoke rose from pyres of all that garbage burning all along the beach road. The locals were burning it since there’s no other garbage disposal arrangement, and it’s better to burn rather than dump in the sea. Hundreds of plastic bags, filled with unrecyclable plastic, burned away. Not surprisingly, no turtles sighted that night.
I’m a green sea turtle looking for a safe beach. There’s not more three hundred thousand of us in the world’s oceans. I need a safe stretch of sand to lay my eggs. Swimming along Turtle Beach, where the sand is soft and dry, perfect for laying my eggs, can I come out of the sea? I sense danger. There are lights, noise, smoke, and oh! so many people. I’d better swim along till I find a safer, quieter beach. But what if I don’t find one? I’m getting tired. It’s becoming harder and harder to find safe spaces on these beaches. What’s wrong? On my last trip here, there was someone who climbed on top of me to take photos. They thought it was fun. I was lucky I made it back alive.
* Educate people about how irresponsible human activity poses the greatest threat to the survival of the green sea turtle.
* Sindh Wildlife Club’s website has an insightful short documentary on green turtles. Watch it.
* Concerned citizens, environmental pressure groups, NGOs, local government, Sindh Wild Life Dept, and companies with a social responsibility agenda, spread awareness about the turtles.
* Ban the use of bright lights, loudspeakers, and weekend parties, especially in the turtle egg laying season: September-February.
* Install signage all along Turtle Beach about the turtles’ life-cycle and their need for safe spaces to lay their eggs.
* Implement turtle-friendly construction laws: make it mandatory to leave at least 400 meters space between beach houses.
* Implement a responsible tourism policy. Ask visitors not to litter or to take their garbage home.
* Start a garbage collection and disposal programme for Hawkes Bay and Sands Pit. Burning plastic and paper waste or dumping it in the sea is not the solution.
* Spread awareness in schools and colleges. Students can get involved with the work of the Marine Turtle Conservation Unit and beach clean-up drives.
We need to realise how this gentle reptile does Karachiites a favour in choosing a strip of their coastline. If the citizens of Karachi are more mindful of how they treat these visitors, there’s no reason why they should stop laying their eggs on our shores. If we don’t, it would be our irreparable loss.
A few days later, good news! A friend and I returned to Turtle Beach. It was the middle of the week and there were no parties or people. The beach was dark and quiet. No sound except the waves, no light except moonlight. And there she was, lying in a big pit she had dug in the sand for depositing her eggs. I couldn’t believe my luck! She was big. The marine turtle unit guards measured her: three and a half feet long and two and a half feet wide and by their estimate, weighing at least 350 kg .The guards told us to be very quiet and not use our phone lights or cameras or she won’t lay eggs.
When she finished laying, the guards collected her eggs, soft and pliable, round and white things, covered with sand. We took her 71 perfectly spherical eggs back to the unit’s hatchery to put them in safe-keeping in protected nests, each surrounded by a wire cage. It’ll be 40-60 days before the hatchlings emerge.
She came and she stole my heart. I knew what love at first sight is. Wherever she’s gone, my heart’s gone with her. I found myself praying for her. I want to return to release her hatchlings into the sea.
It was past midnight. On our drive back into the dusty, crowded, polluted city, Abida Parveen was singing a ghazal that has come to symbolise for me the turtle’s survival prayer: Lakhon hi musafir chalte hain, Manzil pe pohonchte hain do ek, Ay ahl-e-zamana qadar karo, Nayaab na hon kamyaab hain hum. Thousands strive, but only a few reach the shore, O people, value us, we are rare, and we might disappear.
The writer is a psychotherapist and feminist. She can be reached at nighat.majidgmail.com.
This article was originally published in an issue of SouthAsia Magazine.