'Aame Habba', a sea turtle festival in Kodi Beach, Kundapur, will be organised by Field Services and Inter-Cultural Learning India (FSL India) and Clean Kundapur Project on April 30.
Mysuru Maharaja Yaduveer Wadiyar has been invited to inaugurate the festival in order to create awareness about marine conservation. Sand art, a drawing competition and a kite festival were among other activities planned on that day, said FSL India president Rakesh Soans.
FSL India volunteers had discovered as many as nine nesting in the Kodi area, each with over 120 eggs. The hatching rate was greater than 90%. Volunteers had saved 16,000 hatchling olive ridley sea turtles in Kodi, Kundapur, in the past 17 years, he said.
Hundreds of olive ridley sea turtles, a species of sea turtle, were conserved on Kodi Beach by protecting their hatchlings. In this stretch, two other sea turtle species, green sea turtles and leatherback sea turtles were also sighted, he added.
Soans, on the basis of his observations from 2004 to 2012, says that olive ridley's nesting season was from October to January. But, due to changes in weather patterns and global warming, the nesting season now begins in January and ends in May.
"These observations will be discussed in the workshop during the festival," he said.