Rescue of two sea turtles from ghost net during marine mammal survey along the southwest coast of India

Chogale, Pradip N and Ganesan, Arun and Ayoob, A E and Jeyabaskaran, R and Ratheesh Kumar, R (2022) Rescue of two sea turtles from ghost net during marine mammal survey along the southwest coast of India. Indian Ocean Turtle Newsletter (35). pp. 8-10. ISSN 0973-1695

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Abstract

The Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) in Kochi, the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) in Kochi, and the Fishery Survey of India (FSI) in Mumbai, jointly began conducting deep sea surveys in the Indian exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to assess marine mammal populations and estimate marine mammal and sea turtle bycatch on 1st April 2020. On 28th July, along the southwest coast of Kerala, we observed two ghost nets (Table 1) at different locations with entangled turtles. One alive and one dead olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) were entangled in the net at 10.730167° N, 75.389694° E (Figure 1 and 2) and a live green turtle (Chelonia mydas) was entangled in the net at 10.65780° N, 75.546333° E (cover image; this issue). Water depth was between 130-200m and temperature 27-28°C at each location. Algae and goose-necked barnacles (Lepas anserifera) were growing on the nets, and the nets and attached biota may have provided a source of food, shelter, and basking platform for the turtles before entanglement (Whittow & Balazs, 1982; Nichols et al., 2001; Boyle & Limpus, 2008; Stelfox et al., 2019).

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