For nearly four decades, residents in southern India’s coastal city of Chennai have patrolled moonlit beaches at night trying to protect sea turtles and their hatchlings that for millennia have nested along these shores. Hungry dogs, locals looking for a snack, and disorienting lights are among the hazards facing the olive ridley turtles and their eggs, which can take up to 60 days to hatch. Many turtles are caught offshore in fishing nets, which this year alone have killed hundreds of them in the area. A forest official collects olive ridley sea turtle eggs on Marina Beach in Chennai. A crow flies over a hatchery for the olive ridley sea turtles on Elliot’s Beach in Chennai. A volunteer collects broken egg shells at a hatchery for the olive ridley sea turtles on Elliot’s Bea...
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Off the shore of Thailand's resort island of Phuket, marine conservationists have released 11 baby leatherback sea turtles into the Indian Ocean, hoping they can thrive in the wild and return in two decades to reproduce. The release of the year-old turtles, each about the size of a rugby ball, follows an intense conservation effort to boost the leatherback's survival chances after the discovery in 2018 that the endangered species had returned to lay eggs in southern Thailand. FILE PHOTO: One-month-old baby leatherback turtles swim inside a pond at Phuket Marine Biological Center, in Phuket province, Thailand, April 7, 2024. REUTERS/Napat Wesshasartar The stronger turtles have successfully made their way into the ocean, while others perished after hatching, so a programme was laun...
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