The Hindu Business Line : Swimming with the tide of conservation

CHANDRASIRI Abrew, a fisherman from Sri Lanka's coastal village of Kosgoda, had no concept of environmental degradation and oceanic pollution when he started his turtle hatchery 22 years ago.

The concept of World Oceans Day was yet to be conceived. It took more than 10 years for the UN World Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, to mark June 8 as World Oceans Day.

Inspired by his father's worldly knowledge and his innate love for the oceans and its myriad creatures, young Abrew started buying turtle eggs from local fishermen in 1982, breeding the hatchlings and releasing the young ones back into the sea.

It was a difficult enterprise to start with. The fishermen saw turtle eggs as an easy protein-rich supplement to their daily diet. And when the monsoons crashed on the docile coastline, there was nothing else to eat. Said Abrew: "I started out by buying 100 eggs from the fishermen for SL Rs 5. It was no easy task for a poor village fisherman like me to mobilise the money. Yet my love for the sea and its denizens sustained the venture. Today, I pay SL Rs 500 for 100 eggs."

The token entry fee, collections from a curio shop run by him and other contributions sustain the venture today. The collected eggs are incubated and the hatchlings are released back into the sea on the third day. "The third day is the most auspicious and safe day for the hatchlings to be released into the sea since the binding smell of the yolk will have worn off and the trigger to attract the all-pervading marine predators will have disappeared. The chances of survival from the third day are much higher than those of release on the first day," said Abrew.

But commercialisation is catching up with the world of sea turtle conservation in Sri Lanka. In several places, the seacoast is dotted with freshly painted boards beckoning visitors to other turtle hatcheries. The large number of visitors and the international fame that the Kosgoda hatchery has received in recent years seem to be drawing a string of newcomers into a seemingly commercial/conservation venture.

Yet conservation is the catchword among the fishermen, hotel chains and the local population making a living through tourism. The Taj Exotica on the Bentota coast in Sri Lanka has been in the forefront of this campaign. Said Ranjan Stanislaus, General Manager of Taj Exotica: "We not only take care of the coastline but also promote turtle conservation, imparting knowledge and taking visitors to the hatchery."

At dusk, it is time to release the day's three-day-olds back into the sea. Tourists and schoolchildren gather at 6 p.m. and release thousands of hatchlings back into the sea, with the hope that maybe one will return back to the beach at Kosgoda.

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