A satellite-tagged Olive Ridley Tortoise ‘Bageshree’ has covered a distance of 1200 km in a straight line from Guhagar. The Mangrove Foundation of Maharashtra Forest Department initiated this joint research project in collaboration with the Wildlife Society of India Dehradun. There are a few nests of olive ridley turtles along the coast of Maharashtra. So far, Olive Ridley sea turtles have only been tagged off the east coast of India.
This is the first satellite tagging project for olive ridley turtles on the west coast of India. This is a research project initiated to understand the movement and migration patterns of turtles and their numbers. Under this project, on February 21, teams of the Wildlife Society of India, Mangrove Foundation and Ratnagiri Division of Maharashtra Forest Department patrolled the Guhagar beach. This time they found two female Olive Ridley tortoises. Both these turtles came to nest on the beach.
After they nested, on February 23, a Wildlife Institute of India satellite team tagged them, and again these turtles were released into the sea. Both these turtles were named as ‘Bageshree’ and ‘Guha’. Among them, ‘Bageshree’, a female tortoise, has migrated from Ratnagiri to the south of the Arabian Sea and is a hundred kilometres south of Kanyakumari. ‘Bageshree’ has so far covered a distance of 1200 km in a straight line from Guhagar.