Rare turtles make surprise return to beaches battered by Asian tsunami

Endangered marine turtles have beaten the tourists back to the beaches barely 100 days after the Boxing Day tsunami. Scores of the reptiles have been spotted laying eggs at the usual Sri Lankan nesting sites on the southern and western coasts and more turtles are expected at breeding beaches in 10 other tsunami-affected countries around the Indian Ocean.

Endangered marine turtles have beaten the tourists back to the beaches barely 100 days after the Boxing Day tsunami. Scores of the reptiles have been spotted laying eggs at the usual Sri Lankan nesting sites on the southern and western coasts and more turtles are expected at breeding beaches in 10 other tsunami-affected countries around the Indian Ocean.

Conservationists are eager to safeguard these turtle eggs from poachers, particularly since so many of the rubbery eggs were washed out to sea on Boxing Day. At the best of times, only one sea turtle survives out of every thousand eggs.

After Indian Ocean shorelines were reshaped by December's monster waves, scientists feared that havoc would result in the breeding patterns of vulnerable sea turtles, which return to specific warm water beaches to reproduce, being severely affected.

Turtle numbers have been dwindling for decades because of encroachment on breeding grounds by hotels, reef damage and pollution.

Conservationists despaired in December when fishermen in Mannar, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere started hawking turtle meat tosurvivors who were averse to eating fish after seeing thousands of drowned bodies. Rare species, such as the loggerhead, green, leatherback, Oliver Ridley and hawksbill, were going into the soup pot again.

A Thai marine biologist, Kongkiat Kittiwattanawong, had said at the time: "The tsunami may push the turtle population one step closer to extinction." But Dayananda Kariyawasam, the director general of the Sri Lankan department of wildlife conservation, is optimistic now that female turtles are swimming ashore. "Luckily December was not the nesting period. So thousands of eggs and sea turtles were saved," he told the BBC.

The future had indeed looked grim. A commercial turtle hatchery at Bentota, in south Sir Lanka, lost 20,000 hatchlings and almost all the older turtles kept in captivity. All 2,000 turtles at a centre run by the Thai navy in Phang Nga were swept away.

Endangered turtles did not make headlines except when staff at conservation projects in the region were hard hit. The Andaman and Nicobar Environment Trust field in Great Nicobar suffered enormously. Six out of its seven field staff vanished in the tsunami. The survivor was Santosh Augu, a field assistant, who was missing for 17 days.

The Italian Naucrates sea turtle project on Thailand's Koh Phra Thong was also obliterated. Two marine biologists - Lisa Jones, from Windsor in Berkshire, and Rebecca Clark from Nova Scotia, Canada - were swept off the beach, along with 14 other victims. But soldiers looking for survivors north of Phuket found at least 26 giant green turtles marooned almost a mile inland. Some, weighing in at 24 stone, were estimated to be 30 years old.

Last week, officials from 25 Asian countries met in Bangkok to declare 2006 the Year of the Turtle. But despite stringent wildlife protection laws, millions of Asian turtles are sold every year as Chinese delicacies, traditional medicine or pets. Green turtles are so named because their fat turns that colour after cooking.