Satellite transmitter on Olive Ridleys to determine unknown facets

Bhubaneswar, Mar 09 (UNI)In a bid to determine many unknown facets the researchers of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Orissa Forest Department have successfully deployed Platform Terminal Transmitter(PTT) on the rare and endangered Olive Ridley sea turtles.

The PTT would determine the distribution, habitat use, migration pattern, seasonal duration and location of Olive Ridley congregations in the Bay of Bengal along the east coast of India. Lakhs of Olive Ridleys come to the Orissa coast every year for mass nesting.

The team led by Prof.B C Choudhury of the WII and Senior Research Officer from the Orissa Forest Department Dr C S Kar along four researchers, a scientist from WII and two scientific personnel from SIRTRACK, New Zealand have conducted the exercise on March 7 last.

The first PTT was deployed on a captured female Olive Ridley turtle at the Rushikulya rookery beach in Ganjam district. The process of PTT deployment on a single Olive Ridley turtle took almost two hours.

So far, the team claimed to deploy seven PTTs on female Olive Ridleys at Rushikulya beach.The research team would deploy as many as 30 satellite transmitters on nesting females at the three mass nesting sites in Orissa by the end of this year's turtle breeding season.

The Director, Wildlife Preservation, Government of India and the Chief Wildlife Warden, Government of Orissa have accorded permission to the WII for placement of PTTs on 70 male and female Olive Ridleys during the two year duration of the project.

Sources said the SIRTRACK, a New Zealand based farm has provided the PTTs and the transmitted location data from the released turtles would be obtained from the ARGOS satellite systems.

The information from these transmitters would help the scientists to determine many unknown facets on the breeding biology of Olive Ridley turtles especially their arrival, departure, migration route and offshore distribution during the breeding as well as non-breeding season.

The study would help plan out a marine biodiversity friendly hydrocarbon exploration programme in the Bay of Bengal.

UNI