Why This One Man Walked 4000 Kilometres Along India’s Shores to Save Sea Turtles From Disappearing
(Note: Featured image generated using AI)
The name Satish Bhaskar conjures up the idea of a conservationist and his umbilical link with sea turtles. Retellings of his bravado are anecdotal — in the 1970s, Bhaskar traversed 4,000 kilometres of India’s 7,516 km coastline in a bid to mark out sea turtle habitats, which would form a blueprint from which generations of conservationists could draw an understanding of turtle behaviours.
These behaviours included nesting patterns and the nature and numbers of the eggs they laid. Bhaskar’s learnings became the fulcrum around which turtle conservation began to be studied.
As he charted the course of the coastline, a small transistor radio and an indefatigable spirit served as his only companions. He was at ease among the reptiles, never daunted by the lack of company of the deep silence that the islands he travelled were often bathed in.
“I never felt alone,” Bhaskar recounted to filmmaker Taira Malaney, whose 75-minute documentary film ‘Turtle Walker’ received the ‘Conservation’ and ‘Grand Teton’ awards at the Jackson Wild Media Awards in 2024.
The documentary chronicles Bhaskar’s epic journeys as he undertook a “death-defying quest, [while] he unravelled mysteries surrounding these enigmatic ocean creatures [sea turtles] and set out to save them from extinction”.
In fact, Bhaskar’s extensive research became the touchstone for interventions around sea turtle conservation undertaken on the beaches of the Andaman Islands.
Exiled himself to solitude and turtles
The most retold story of Bhaskar’s intrepidity is of him consigning himself to the uninhabited Suheli island in Lakshadweep in 1982, where for five months he conducted surveys on sea turtles, keen to observe them at length.
The island’s remoteness and inaccessibility made Bhaskar decide to shift to it during the monsoon season, which was the main nesting period of the green sea turtles. Leaving his wife and three-month-old daughter behind, Bhaskar marooned himself on Suheli from May to September.
As Indian herpetologist Romulus Whitaker wrote in a certain editorial, “We started going over all the things that could go wrong, anything from a bad toothache to malaria or an upset tummy could put a real damper on this idea, but he was adamant and did maroon himself on the island between June and September 1982. Not much fazed Satish in the field.”
Whether while on the Suheli island or as he travelled in succession along the coastline — across Kerala, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, and West Papua, Indonesia — he left an indelible mark in each place. The breadth of his travels enabled him to bring a nuanced, well-groomed gaze to the subject of turtle conservation.
These journeys of his were audacious. One anecdote is of how, while on Little Andaman Island, he ran out of rations.
Bhaskar survived on biscuits and vitamins for four days, until he was able to get himself some barbecued meat from an empty Onge tribal camp, an indigenous tribe residing in the Andaman Islands.
But despite these hiccups, nothing could deter Bhaskar from his steel-like focus on the species he loved the most, the sea turtles, a love that dated back to his childhood days.
Sea turtles are solitary creatures that remain submerged for most of the time, which makes them extremely difficult to study.
News of their exploitation — the World Wildlife Fund details the culprits as poachers who slaughter these turtles for their eggs, meat, skin, and shells and fishing nets that accidentally end up destroying their habitats — appalled Bhaskar, who decided to devote his life’s work to their conservation.
He harboured a deep reverence for sea turtles, evident in the 50 reports and papers he authored.
But, as Whitaker insisted in his editorial, the legend’s generosity outpaced his excellence. He was more than the sum of his work.
He shares how Bhaskar’s paper on sea turtle conservation presented at the World Conference on the Biology and Conservation of Sea Turtles in 1979 became a landmark document in the history of sea turtle biology. “This was a bible for many years for the community. Satish’s article in the collection is the first comprehensive account of sea turtle nesting across India,” he writes.
‘India needs a Mr Sea Turtle’
Nothing could deter Bhaskar from going after what he wanted, not even his trigeminal neuralgia (a condition sudden, intense, electric shock-like pain on one side of the face). In his 70s, while heading to South Reef Island in North Andaman — devastated in 2004 by a tsunami, also the island where Bhaskar had previously initiated a monitoring programme for hawksbill turtles — the boat journey was proving too hazardous. It did not take more than an instant for Bhaskar to don his fins and enter the water.
Whitaker is not surprised. He got a front row seat to Bhaskar’s love for adventure and going the extra mile, while the two often interacted during the development of the Madras Snake Park, quite near to IIT Madras where Bhaskar was studying. In fact Bhaskar is said to have spent more time swimming in the waters of Tamil Nadu than in the classroom.
Whitaker encouraged the students toward nocturnal beach walks to find olive ridley sea turtle nests and rebury these in a safe hatchery set up at the Cholamandal Artists Colony.
“The rest of us at the Madras Snake Park were hung up on snakes and crocodiles, and it was Satish’s dedicated single-mindedness that made me suggest to him that India needs a Mr Sea Turtle, and he would be the ideal man for the job,” Whitaker writes.
Bhaskar seemed to take this advice to heart.
Following his IIT degree, Bhaskar was hired as a field officer, in which capacity he worked, and impressed the WWF-India, which offered him his first grant.
Then on, his travels across India spawned a cycle of insights into the world of sea turtles, lessons which hold in good stead even today.
Even when turtle researcher and conservationist Ed Moll came to India to conduct a freshwater turtle study, Bhaskar stepped in to help survey the highly endangered Northern river terrapin (Batagur baska), which nests on coastal beaches along with olive ridleys.
In April 2010, during the 30th Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation in Goa, the International Sea Turtle Society presented him with a Sea Turtle Champions Award for his outstanding contributions to sea turtle research through his surveys.
Bhaskar passed away in March 2023, but left behind a legacy — his very own footprints in the sand — for generations of conservationists to follow.
Edited by Vidya Gowri Venkatesh
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