You don’t have to be famous to save the world.The Sea Turtle Project in Bentota is worth your help to save marine turtles. Sri Lanka Tourism involves marine conservation. Elsie Gabriel.

You don’t have to be famous to save the world.

The Sea Turtle Project in Bentota is worth your help to save marine turtles. Sri Lanka Tourism involves marine conservation. Elsie Gabriel.

The Sea Turtle Project in Bentota is only one of the initiatives on the Island of Sri Lanka to help save the marine turtles from extinction. The island has many benefactors, specially after the Tsunami disaster, several crusaders have taken it upon themselves to save the sea creatures.

So, as the saying goes, you don’t have to be famous to save the world , surely applies here!!

Visitors and research students alike come in to study or observe the baby turtles and depending on the season and time of day can watch them being released in to the ocean. There are five different species of Sea Turtle to be found along the coast of Sri Lanka – Loggerhead, Olive Ridley, Leatherback, Green Turtle and Hawksbill.

 These turtle hatcheries were constructed to rescue and protect turtle eggs because of the rapidly declining numbers of marine turtle in Sri Lankan shores. Marine turtle eggs are purchased from the  local fisherman and re-buried along the beach and left there for two days allowing the eggs time to hatch. Thereafter the baby turtles are collected from the beach and kept in tanks for another week, and released into the ocean to fend off for themselves. And believe it or not,the few female turtles that survive may return to their natal shores after a decade to lay their own eggs.

My favourite was the three legged albino turtle, with not a care in the world. But the image of this turtle tells a million stories, nylon fishing lines destroying limbs, plastic bags in the ocean suffocating the ocean creatures, and harsh climatic conditions throwing them ashore. The harsh stories are endless. When will all this stop.

We can not change the old mind set who refuse to believe that our children and their children may never get to see marine turtles in the near future, they are among the endangered lot. But what we can do is educate the young adults and children, adopt, sponsor or campaign for creatures who can not fight for themselves.

Marine turtles were roaming the oceans for about 190 million years, much before we were born, so the ocean is their habitat not ours. Do not forget to visit and promote the conservation of marine turtles, wherever or whenever you take a vacation to a seaside destination.