Against the backdrop of the gigantic port city of Karachi, its endless traffic jams and chaotic construction sites, four green turtles emerge from the foam on the sandy shores of the Arabian Sea, looking for a place to lay their eggs.
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Three of them quickly return to the water, put off by the bright lights and noise of a party not far away on the beach.
But the final animal waves its flipper-like legs and throws sand into the air to reach a dry place, where it lays 88 eggs the size of a golf ball.
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Six environmentalists tasked with ensuring the protection of the last species of turtle nesting in Pakistan stand guard nearby.
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“Being human doesn’t mean you just have to love people. These animals also need the same attention and love,” argues Ashfaq Ali Memon, head of the marine conservation service for the southern province of Sindh.
Sandspit Beach is both a popular recreational spot for Karachi’s approximately 22 million residents and a natural habitat for green turtles, which are critically endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
But the construction of concrete houses continues inexorably on the eight-kilometer-long beach and, meter by meter, is eating away the sand space in which turtles nest.
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“I once saw someone disturbing a turtle that was laying eggs. She ran for cover, leaving a trail of eggs behind. It was a painful scene,” says Haseen Bano, Mr. Memon’s wife, who supports his team’s work.
Threatened by pollution
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), sea turtles have traveled vast distances across our planet’s oceans for more than 100 million years, but human activities are now threatening the species’ survival.
Until the early 2000s, Pakistan’s shores of the Arabian Sea, also called the Arabian Sea, were a nesting site for five endangered species of turtles.
Today only green turtles nest on this coast, on two beaches in Karachi and on uninhabited islands in Balochistan province further west, towards the border with Iran.
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Construction, noise and plastic pollution threaten this turtle, which gets its name from the greenish color of its flesh, which comes from the plants it eats.
Accidental catches in fishing nets are also one of the main causes of death. And fuel fumes cause deformities in baby turtles, notes WWF Pakistan.
Turtles have long been exploited for their skin and shells in Pakistan. However, they have been protected since the 1970s by local laws and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (Cites), to which the country is a signatory.
The Sindh Wildlife Protection Department has a team of six volunteers who work for green turtles. They are paid based on donations and patrol the beaches at night during the breeding season between August and January.
“Living Dinosaurs”
The green turtle lays an average of about a hundred eggs in nests that it digs in the sand with its hind legs.
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Volunteers are present when the turtles arrive “to look after them and make sure no one disturbs them,” explains one of them, Amir Khan.
They then carefully collect the eggs and take them to a protected coastal area, where they bury them back in the sand for an incubation period of 45 to 60 days, safe from predators such as dogs, mongooses or snakes.
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Barely a few hours old and five centimeters long, newborns are brought into buckets, placed individually in the water and then swim away into the night.
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There is no data on the number of green turtles in Pakistan, but the number of hatchlings born under the supervision of Sindh volunteers has increased in recent years.
In 2022 they hatched around 30,000 eggs, and this year in mid-season they have already hatched more than 25,000.
But these “living dinosaurs” will continue to be threatened by Karachi’s urban expansion and the dangers posed by fishermen, complains Amir Khan.
“It feels good to take care of these turtles, they make our beach more beautiful,” said Mohammad Javed, a 29-year-old volunteer who succeeded his father.