The Hindu Business Line : A life-long walk among turtles

FOR 35 nights Vishwas Dattatray Katdare (Bhau) walked the empty Velas beach in Ratnagiri to view a female Olive Ridley (sagari kasava in Marathi) climb ashore to lay eggs before sighting one.

"With her front flippers she crawls and pulls up to take a deep breath every fourth step as she carries about 150 eggs in her. At a safe distance from the waves she selects a spot in the sand and starts digging. At a depth of about 18 inches she unloads her eggs and covers it with sand. Before leaving she taps the sand hard — thup, thup — with her flippers. If you are not at the spot it is hard to locate the nest as the female turtle makes a wide detour before heading back to the sea. I have caught the scene on video," Bhau told us as we walked the beach at 10 in the night hoping for the coming of a female. It did not happen.

Varad Giri, Bhau, Vivek Bendre and myself touched the beach at around 4 in the evening, having decided to spend the night near the hatchery built by the Sahyadri Nisarg Mitra, headed by Bhau. With a three-quarter moon overhead, we walked barefoot for an hour till 11 in the night, with the Arabian Sea on high tide. We slept till one on thermocol sheets spread on the sands when Bhau decided to make a second try.

A chill wind was blowing as we trudged the sands between 1 and 2. Walking on dry and wet sand is hard on the calf muscles and is tiring. The Arabian Sea had pulled away from the beach, and we slept fitfully till about 5 in the morning. In between Bhau and Vivek got up to inspect the hatchery with torches for fresh hatchlings. A close-cropped head with a few spiky strands turning white, clean-shaved Bhau at 40 is of medium height, wiry and quiet. He lost his right eye while building a watchtower near a nest of white-bellied sea eagles. He probably caught the habit from his father, Dattatray Katdare, who today rests in his village home. In the late 50s and 60s his father subscribed to the National Geographic and was a member of the Bombay Natural History Society.

Bhau in his school and college days was an able kabaddi player, having played one match for Maharashtra before selection politics knocked him out. "I wanted to be a kabaddi coach but that did not work," Bhau told us. Watching birds for a time helped but Bhau wanted to move on. "Iske oopar kuch karna tha (I wanted to do something more)," he confessed.

In 2000, at Nivati village near Vengurla rocks he spotted some Indian Swiftlets inside a cave. After inquiries and a bit of trekking, Bhau tripped on a smuggling operation. An operator based in Tiruchi, Tamil Nadu, had employed a few men to pull out the nests built by the Indian Swiftlets with their saliva, as they went to make a tasty soup in South-East Asia; the Swiftlets were left alone. Every year about 5,000 nests were plucked valued at Rs 50 lakh. Bhau contacted the forest department and the local fishermen to stop the operation; six men were arrested and today the Indian Swiftlets can live in their own nests as they fall in Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Act. The Vengurla species is different from that in the Andamans & Nicobar Islands where, at one point, hunting of nests was allowed though now the birds are left in peace.

Bhau has a wide smile, which comes up rarely. He does not pretend to know every bird along the Konkan coast and adds, "Bahut kuch dekhne ko aur sikhne ko hai (There is a lot to see and learn). The man has built strong links with the local populace and they help in keeping a detailed logbook on the behaviour of the white-backed vulture, which is nearing extinction in the country.

When Olive Ridley turtles come out of the hatchery, villagers in Velas call him up on his mobile and that happened when we were having dinner at Chiplun on the last day. Ask him how strong is his Sahyadri Nisarg Mitra and he laughs away the query. Bhau is alone and in his spare time spends hours on beaches and Konkan wadis (orchards). At Chiplun he works in the stores department of a yeast factory and whose management does not much care for the work done by him. "Theek hai (Its okay)," he says. He is a bachelor, does not smoke, drink or chew paan; most importantly, he is a veg, a rare thing, indeed, in Konkan. The best moment: When father praised the son for the nature work being done at an award function. "That was the best compliment," Bhau told us. He sure has something of the Olive Ridley or the delightful white-bellied sea eagle in him.

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A life-long walk among turtles

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