Bengaluru: Arribada means arrival in Spanish. And in Odisha’s Rushikulya beach, an arribada of Olive Ridley turtles is an annual phenomenon. Almost every year, usually in February, thousands, even lakhs, of female Olive Ridley turtles turn up at this beach to lay their eggs. They dig two feet-deep sand pits, deposit their precious eggs (anywhere from 100-150 in number), cover it with sand, and then take off back into the Bay of Bengal from where they came.
But this year’s arribada was special.
Nearly seven lakh turtles arrived at Rushikulya’s 5-km-long beach from February 16 to 26, beating the record turnout of 6.3 lakh in the year 2023. According to scientists who have been studying the arribada, this year’s is the biggest in 20 years of their documentation of the mass nesting phenomenon. This, along with the increased numbers of turtle nestings across many beaches along both the west and east coasts of India this year, suggests that the population of these turtles are doing well, they told The Wire.
The arribada
Named after their olive-green shells, Olive Ridleys (Lepidochelys olivacea) are sea turtles that dwell in the warm tropical waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Though they are among the most abundant sea turtles in the world, the clean, dry and sandy beaches they need to nest in are fast disappearing across their range. Hence, the IUCN Red List – which classifies wildlife based on the threats they face – lists Olive Ridleys as “Vulnerable” (just short of “Endangered’). India too is home to several sandy beaches where the turtles come to nest. And Odisha’s Rushikulya is one of them.
Named after their olive-green shells, Olive Ridleys (Lepidochelys olivacea) are sea turtles that dwell in the warm tropical waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Photo: K.S. Seshadri.
Rushikulya is also among the very few places in the world where female Olive Ridleys come to nest in thousands, and lakhs, almost every year. This mass nesting is called an arribada. The arribada at Rushikulya this year occurred between February 16 and 26. According to the Odisha Forest Department which monitors the number of nesting turtles on the small five-km-long beach every year, this year witnessed a huge turnout: 6.98 lakh Olive Ridleys, according to Sunny Khokhar, Divisional Forest Officer of Berhampur under which Rushikulya falls. Sporadic, or smaller nesting events numbering in tens to thousands, also occurred across several beaches across Odisha and India’s coasts this year. The Odisha Forest Department has a “standard SOP” when the turtles arrive, Khokhar told The Wire. Forest guards and rangers fenced off the entire area of the beach to make sure that dogs (and sometimes people) didn’t steal the eggs, and barricaded the paths leading up to the beach.
A 26-member team from the Bengaluru-based Dakshin Foundation and Indian Institute of Science counted 4.5-5 lakh nesting turtles in the 2.5-2.7 km stretch of Rushikulya during this year’s arribada, Vidisha Kulkarni, programme officer of Dakshin Foundation’s Marine Flagship Programme told The Wire. Female Olive Ridleys usually start arriving at the beach in the evening, between 5.30 and 6 p.m. and leave by 7 am the next morning. On February 18 and 19, the team noticed that turtles came in far earlier than usual – at around 2 and 3 p.m, Kulkarni said.
“Though this has been recorded before, it is uncommon,” she added.
A record turnout this year: Why?
“Our team at Dakshin Foundation and IISc Bangalore has been monitoring this population since 2007 with the support of the Odisha Forest Department…we [now] know that this is one of the biggest arribadas we have recorded at Rushikulya over the last 20 years,” said Kartik Shanker, who leads the Marine Flagships programme at Dakshin. “Though arribadas may not occur in some years, the overall trends suggest that this population is healthy.”
Arribada 2025, Olive Ridley turtles at Rushikulya beach. Photo: Bipro Behera.
The beach at Rushikulya did not witness an arribada last year. According to DFO Khokhar, the huge number of Olive Ridleys nesting on the beach this year could be due to the lack of rainfall in February – that has ensured that the sand was loose enough for the turtles to dig their sand pits to lay eggs in – and the smooth incline of the beach this year when compared to last year when the beach was too high for the turtles to climb and come ashore. Coastal erosion was also a concern last year, he added.
Kulkarni echoed Khokar’s views. Not just the beach, but the climatic conditions too were ideal for turtle nesting this year, she told The Wire; it wasn’t too hot.
In fact, 2025 may be a good year for India’s turtles: there have also been anecdotal records of far higher numbers of turtle nests across beaches along both the east and west coast this year, Shanker told The Wire.
Nuances in turtle deaths
The mega arribada in Rushikulya follows closely on the heels of turtle deaths that have been in the news recently. In January this year, more than 1,000 dead Olive Ridleys washed ashore across the beaches of Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The fisheries department began daily patrolling within five nautical miles of the coast – an area where trawlers are banned from fishing. Erring trawler boats would have their licenses cancelled and subsidies withdrawn, the department had said. In February, the department withdrew the subsidies of 100 fishermen, reported Times of India. However, fishermen have alleged that pollution is the leading cause of mortality and not their fishing – and that the government is failing to hold people responsible for the pollution.
Turtle mortality is probably not as much of a problem as people think, and issues such as coastal development are bigger concerns, Shankar told The Wire.
Now, all eyes are on the tiny turtle hatchlings that will emerge out of the nests in Rushikulya beach by the end of April or the beginning of May. Photo: KS Seshadri.
“The first thing we need to do is stop attacking fishermen and polarising this issue,” Shanker told The Wire, adding that this “knee-jerk” reaction of blaming fishermen was causing a lot of strife within the fishing community. “We need to make it more about ecosystem conservation, protecting near-shore areas for both fisheries and ecosystems and traditional fishermen…We don’t need to make the turtle the center of this volatile issue where fishers get criminalised, and they start putting up their defenses…We need to have softer approaches to working with fishers to reduce turtle deaths.”
Also read: Missing the Sea for the Turtles
Moreover, what cannot be ruled out is that the higher turtle deaths in Chennai’s beaches could well be because there are more turtles coming in to nest, Shanker said. Twenty years ago, he had no evidence to say that turtles were doing well, but that’s no longer the case, especially in Rushikulya, he added.
“Now, I can tell you with some confidence that numbers in Rushikulya have gone up from roughly 25-50,000 to 1-4 lakh over the last 15 years,” he told The Wire.
Now, all eyes are on the tiny turtle hatchlings that will emerge out of the nests in Rushikulya beach by the end of April or the beginning of May. Kulkarni says that the high number of nesting turtles during this arribada may also translate to higher hatching success. Meanwhile, guards, watchers and other members of the Odisha forest department will protect the nests and beach at Rushikulya until that happens since the beach is not part of a protected area, Khokar told The Wire.
