The Night the Beach Disappears Under Turtles
At Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary on Odisha's northern coast, rangers have counted over 600,000 Olive Ridley turtles nesting in a single arribada, a Spanish word adopted by biologists for this mass synchronised nesting that has no equivalent in any other reptile species. The females arrive in the dark, drag themselves above the tide line, excavate a flask-shaped pit roughly 45 centimetres deep with their hind flippers, deposit around 100 to 150 eggs, cover the clutch, and return to the sea, all within 45 minutes to an hour. Then another female takes the same patch of sand. Then another. At peak arribada, the beach at Gahirmatha holds so many turtles that the sand itself is invisible.
