Missing the Sea for the Turtles

Read all stories in the Science of the Seas series here.

The tracks were fresh. The turtle had swum into the mouth of the Adyar river and emerged from its southern bank. The tracks began at the water mark left by the previous night’s tide to a clearing atop a steep mound of sand. The two fisher elders that led me up the mound were visibly upset. From where we stood, we could see two sets of tracks – one that the turtle had made coming up and the second that it had made returning to the river and the sea. “She left without dropping her eggs,” Palayam said. “This is the third time in the last week that we have seen turtles do this.” 

Mani was squatting on his ankles with his knees pressed to the ground, scooping out the sand to reveal a thick layer of plastic trash. “The minister walks by everyday. Can’t he see the trash lining the beach? Why can’t he have it cleaned? How can she [the turtle] even reach the sand beneath the layers of trash, leave alone dig her nest and lay her eggs?” Mani muttered, almost to himself. Mani Maama and Palayam Anna are senior artisanal fishers from Urur Olcott Kuppam. In their world, the sea turtle is revered as Kutti Amma Saami, the turtle goddess. Snagging a turtle in one’s net was bad luck. Not only did one have to cut the net and release the turtle, but also return to shore, do penance and remain ashore for a day to compensate for the hardship caused to Kutti Amma.

2025 had begun on a deathly note. More than 350 dead turtles had washed ashore along Chennai’s coast just in the first 15 days of January. The sight of these gentle giants lying dead on the beach, eyes bulging and bodies bloated, touched a raw nerve in the city’s public conscience. Commentators were quick to conclude that the death toll this year was unprecedented, and that fishing nets drawn by mechanised trawlers operating illegally within 5 nautical miles of the coast were to blame. Pressured to be seen as doing something, anything, the government of Tamil Nadu announced the formation of a task force to investigate the sorry affair.. As the number of washed-up turtles kept mounting, the government announced that patrolling would be carried out within the restricted zone and errant trawler operators will lose their licence and fuel subsidy. Fingers were also tentatively pointed towards nets designed to catch squids and skates.

Trawling by mechanised boats, and squid and skate nets set by small-scale fishers can all pose inescapable death traps to land-bound turtles, Palayam confirms. Palayam’s village even has an oor-kattu – a village-level ban – on skate nets. The quick conclusion that the number of deaths is unprecedented, that the deaths are caused by mechanised trawlers operating within 5 nautical miles and that the deaths can be reduced by enforcing the ban on nearshore trawling may stave off accusations of inaction by the government and soothe our wounded consciences. Nothing more.

Several things don’t quite add up. My doubts about the integrity of the above conclusions arise from their underlying assumption of increased trawling this year as compared to other years. There is no evidence to suggest that. “Fishing has been poor all round – for us and for the trawlers. We have had two storms and two low pressures. The sea has been calmer since the last depression ended on December 26, but conditions have not been right for fishing. There have been years when the sea was lit up like a mithai kadai (a sweet shop) with trawlers. But not this year. I checked with Barathi (a fisher leader) who had visited Kasimedu fishing harbour, and he confirmed that fishing has been dull,” Palayam said.

Another cause for doubt is the failure by authorities, media and other commentators to consider the role of sea conditions in understanding the phenomenon of beached turtles. Increased numbers of dead turtles reaching the beaches on any given year does not automatically mean increased mortality. In the absence of increased fishing activity or other factors like infection or toxicity, increased beaching could just mean that more carcasses than usual have been pushed ashore and less lost to the sea.

To verify this, we looked at the Science of The Seas (SoTS) database that Palayam and I maintain drawing from Palayam’s daily diary of observations of winds, currents, fishing and sea conditions since August 2018. Of particular relevance to this case is the pattern of prevalent ocean currents between January 1 and 15, 2025. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation dated January 4, 2025:

“Early this morning, the sea was calm. The nearshore current was Vanni (north-south). Midsea current, still. We have had three days of Olini (easterly) current. That is why we are seeing fish like Seedai (a variety of sardinella) and Katta Kola (flying fish) coming up in nets cast from the shore. A few days back, the Olini was so powerful that it pushed a net set at 8 fathoms out at sea right into the river. Today’s the fourth phase of the waxing moon. The sea is calm. The tide should not have crossed the berm. But it has poured over it. That means it was further strengthened by an easterly Olini current. Yesterday only one dead turtle was beached. Today, two were beached. This has been running in my mind. Why are we seeing so many beached turtles? I asked a fisher if he saw any turtles floating by. He said “Yes. When I was hauling my net at 12 fathoms, I saw two float by. Both were dead and coming in from further out at sea. The turtles were coming in from further east.” One could wonder what’s causing these turtle deaths. Further out at sea, there are large commercial fishing vessels that drag nets at a great speed. It is not like before. These vessels have powerful engines and move like a ship dragging the net. If the turtle gets caught in the net as it is being dragged, it cannot escape. It will suffocate and die. If the nets come up with 3 or 4 turtles, he will see if they are alive or dead. If one is alive, he will release it. If they are dead, he will cast them out at sea and they will move with the current and wind.”

On 1 January, 2025, a fisherman caught Seedai fish (a type of sardinella) in his cast net within the surf zone. Seedai does not come ashore unless pushed by powerful easterlies. Photo: S. Palayam, Science of The Seas, 2025.

Under the influence of a Memeri current (westerly land-to-sea), anything dropped into the sea will drift away and be lost to the sea. Only if there is an Olini current will the object reach the shore. According to the SoTS database, we witnessed six Olini days in the first half of January 2025 as against just two each in 2023 and 2024. This strengthens our suggestion that ocean conditions may be a more significant factor in explaining the higher than usual number of carcasses washing up on our beaches.

Source: Science of The Seas database

While this explanation weakens the popular conclusion that more turtles have died this year, it is not meant to take away from the gravity of the problem made visible by this unfortunate phenomenon or let mechanised trawlers off the hook. The turtles washing up in Chennai are unlikely to have been killed in Chennai. Given the brisk currents running from the north and the east, the turtles are likely to have met their end in the deep sea in Andhra. Those killed off Chennai’s coasts are likely to be beached further south subject to prevalent currents in those locales.

That brings me to two final questions:

1. What if the prevailing currents had been flowing from land to sea, and all carcasses had been lost to sea? Would we still be concerned?
2. What if the trawlers can somehow be made safe for turtles? Would that be environmentally acceptable?

The kneejerk and superficial ways in which we handle deep-rooted problems made visible by painful phenomena like mass beaching of dead turtles suggests that we are more concerned about soothing our offended sensibilities than about confronting the elephant in the room – namely, our society’s exploitative relationship with nature. Trawlers in the ocean and plastics on the beach and in the seas are both integral to the way we do business. Both are deadly not just for turtles but for a host of sea creatures. 

A washed up bottle with goose barnacles highlights prevailing currents that are pushing flotsam from the deep sea to Chennai’s beaches. Photo: S. Palayam, Science of The Seas, 2025.

I read somewhere that there is more plastic than fish in the ocean. Yet, your government and virtually every government in the world is handing out licences to fat cat corporations to take plastics production from 500 million tonnes (2024) to 1 billion tonnes in 2050. 

Trawlers are a threat to turtles for three months in a year. But they endanger not just sea life but the very basis of it, the sea floor, for nearly 10 months in a year. Trawlers operating in the inshore waters harm the livelihoods of artisanal fishers who use far more selective gear and who could teach the rest of us turtle-saving, trawl-fish consumers a thing or two about sustainable living.

Trawlers were forcibly introduced in Tamil Nadu in the 1950s, in the face of intense opposition by artisanal fishers who felt it was morally wrong to take more than what one needed from the all-giving sea. The violent conflicts that erupted between the artisanal fishers and the capitalist class owning mechanised boats led to the enactment of the Tamil Nadu Marine Fisheries Regulation Act, 1983, which prohibited mechanised boats from fishing within 3 nautical miles of the shore, and restricted their size and engine power, and time at sea to between 5 am and 9 pm. But since then, the government has repeatedly amended the Act to increase the size and engine power, and therefore the destructive capacity, of the mechanised boats. 

In north Chennai, the infrastructure that made the city – the Madras Harbour – has eroded a 11-kilometre stretch of the coastline. The sandy beaches of Thiruvottiyur that once welcomed gravid turtles are now lined by hostile granite boulders. Unmindful of the erosion already caused, the Tamil Nadu fisheries department is constructing a massive tuna fishing harbour in Thiruvottiyur. The government’s vision is to host an industrial fleet to exploit the “untapped tuna potential” of India’s exclusive economic zone. Tuna are swift swimmers, and usually follow pods of dolphin. Industrial fleets, equipped with powerful engines capable of matching the speed of tuna, pursue them to lay gill nets that trap both the tuna and the dolphins. More than 6 million dolphins have been killed by industrial tuna fishers in the 20th century. Dolphin mortality has come down considerably, but scientists say thousands continue to be killed each year. 

Dolphins and turtles, like tigers and elephants, are charismatic megafauna. People feel for these animals and are prompted to act in their defence. That is a great start. But should we not do more than just waste that powerful kinship we enjoy with these grand creatures with feel-good responses that fail to question the deeper causes for their distress?

S. Palayam is a veteran hook-and-line fisher and fisher scientist. Nityanand Jayaraman is a writer, social activist and citizen science enthusiast.