Debarati Pal
First documented in 1974, Gahirmatha became the world’s largest known Olive Ridley rookery; when an arribada occurs, hundreds of thousands can come ashore over a few nights.
After a seven-year gap, Rushikulya’s 2025 season brought two arribadas: nearly seven lakh nestings in February, followed by a second mass arrival in March along its coast.
Launched in 2006, Velas’s Turtle Festival lets visitors glimpse hatchlings heading seaward, while village homestays and the local Turtle Friends group help sustain community-led conservation.
A turtle tagged while nesting at Guhagar in January 2025 returned to the same shore a year later, offering rare evidence of nesting-site fidelity along Maharashtra’s coast.
At Galgibaga, a local priest began turtle conservation in 1999; its hatchery released 1,719 Olive Ridley hatchlings from 19 turtle pits during the 2025–26 nesting season.
Since 1987, SSTCN has patrolled Chennai’s beaches; registered weekend night walks cover the seven-kilometre Neelangarai–Besant Nagar stretch, where nesting turtles are sometimes encountered in January–March.
Agonda’s winter nesting season yielded 4,454 Olive Ridley hatchlings from 51 protected nests by May 2026, a recent tally from conservation work on Goa’s southern coast.