he Kaj Schmidt Memorial

A memorial at the Elliot’s Beach that one can’t miss in Chennai is the The Kaj Schmidt Memorial. Located closer to the Besant Nagar the memorial is a piece of architecture and also a landmark for the region. A plaque on the memorial states that it was built to commemorate the gallantry of Schmidt, an European sailor, who had drowned near the spot trying to save the lives of others on December 30, 1930! Unfortunately today it is now in a derelict state and needs an urgent attention for the protection of the same.

Zero Visibility in Chennai Roads in May

The picture on the side is of the Velachery Main Road, where the visibility is reduced to near zero for motorists taking the stretch, thanks to the non-stop burning of waste at the garbage dumping yard of the Alandur municipality. This is an everyday affair and all pollution control laws [Section 3, 6 and 25 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 (29 of 1986)] flouted!

Close to 110 tonnes of garbage are deposited at the nine-acre (36420.0 sq.m) land-filling site located adjacent to the road by the Alandur and Ullagaram Municipalities.

The smoke emanating from the yard has not only brought down visibility levels for motorists, it has also been causing breathing problems and acute irritation in the eyes for residents, particularly those living in nearby slum pockets.

Officials of the Municipal Administration attribute the cause of fire in the yard, to the scorching heat of the summer and the inflammable materials dumped in the garbage had sparked the fire. It’s a surprise as over 50% of the domestic wastes in India are wet wastes, comprising of vegetables, food etc., which will not easily catch fire. And the surprising act is the fire catches only in the nights/ early mornings and not in the evenings or afternoons!

This is also slowly degrading the Pallikaranai wetland on the opposite side of the road, and eutrophication is setting in!

An article appeared recently in the Hindu on this very menace, with my name quoted in! You could look up the following link if you so desire!

http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/16/stories/2008051659100400.htm

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Will We Become A Refugee of Climate Change...?

Vast stretches of coastal India may just go under water if global warming goes unchecked.

According to a report titled Blue Alert by Greenpeace, if present trends are any indication, there will be a five-degree increase in temperature over the next hundred years. This will submerge large areas and displace around fifty million people in India alone. The report also indicates that a policy change can still avert a two-degree rise in less than a decade.

Now an attempt is being made to mobilise public support to force the government to take a firm stand on climate change. In Chennai, (the city where I live) alone there will be ten million people who may be displaced. We'll become climate refugees.

Many countries have signed the Kyoto protocol in order to bring down green house gas emissions to levels that existed before 1992. But global emissions have actually risen by 24 per cent mainly due to emissions from developing countries like India and China.

Although the US tops the list in CO₂ emissions, it wants developing countries like India and China to take the lead.

In an effort to make the government understand this and pressurize them take action, an attempt is being made to campaign for the public support to mitigate climate change rather than waiting for the catastrophe to happen!

Climate change could also trigger erratic monsoons and break down agricultural systems in the vast and densely populated Gangetic delta. A study conducted on the rapidly warming South Asia, the global environment group said India, whose economy has grown by 8-9 per cent annually in recent years, contributes around 4 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions as its consumption of fossil fuels grows.

The UN Development Programme in its latest report has also warned climate change will hit the world's poorest countries, increasing risks of disease, destruction of traditional livelihoods and triggering massive displacement. Together, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan have nearly 130 million people living along coastal areas less than 10 metres (33 feet) above sea level. (See map). All of us are in the danger of becoming Climate Refugee!

We are already seeing the effects," said Sudhir Chella Rajan, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai. He said the effect of rising temperatures was already apparent in the recurrent floods in coastal Bangladesh.

Join the Campaign!

Greenpeace has simultaneously launched the ‘Blue Alert’ campaign in five of the most vulnerable coastal cities in India: Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Kochi and Goa. The campaign aims to catalyse people in the coastal danger zones, empowering them with information that they can raise with their elected representatives.

Globally more than 1 billion people live in low-lying areas that could be affected by sea level rise. Much of the productive land used to produce food is also in coastal areas at risk from rising sea levels.

The solutions to prevent catastrophic climate change impacts and avoid hundreds of millions of people from being displaced already exist. What’s needed is a revolution in the way we generate energy and an end to global deforestation.

Your voice can help start that revolution!

If you are a citizen of Chennai, please assemble at Besant Nagar Elliot's Beach on Saturday, April 12, 2008.

For further information you can contact the campaigners in the following cities:

Natasha Chandy
+91 93713 33492
natasha.chandy@greenpeace.org

Tanvir
+91 97104 44255

Bangalore
Vinuta Gopal +91 98455 35418
vgopal@dialb.greenpeace.org

Ankur Agarwal +91 98866 22143
aagarwal@in.greenpeace.org

Mumbai
Brikesh Singh +91 98800 92210
bsingh@greenpeace.org

Shweta Ganesh
+91 98450 68125
shweta.ganesh@in.greenpeace.org

Kochi

Somnath Narayan
+91 99020 96657
snarayan@in.greenpeace.org

Kolkata
Maitree Dasgupta
+91 99001 45422
mdasgupt@greenpeace.org

Jayashree Nandi
+91 93438 68011
jnandi@greenpeace.org

Goa

Saumya Sanati
+91 98237 21681
soumya.sanati@gmail.com

Emergence of Olive Ridley Turtle

The Olive Ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea) sea turtle, named for the olive tone of its carapace. It travels in the open ocean waters of tropical Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Olive Ridleys are more abundant seaturtles, but are still on the endangered species list because only a few nesting sites remain worldwide where they can congregate for the Arribada.

Much has yet to be discovered about sea turtles, because most of a sea turtle’s life is spent submerged at sea, studying sea turtles in the wild is challenging. During nesting season, when females come ashore, we can get a rare glimpse of these animals.

Olive Ridley turtles reach sexual maturity when they are 10 --15 years of age. When it is time to mate, male and female turtles will congregate offshore of the beach where they were hatched. When a female is ready to lay her eggs, she will crawl ashore. A mother turtle is choosy about the location of her nest. She will carefully select a location above the high tide line. If she is not satisfied with the quality of the beach or if noises, strange objects or bright lights frighten her, she will return to the sea. This is called a “false crawl.”

Once comfortable with the spot for her nest, the mother turtle uses her flippers to dig a body pit in the sand. With her body in position, she cups her rear flipper and uses them to scoop out an egg cavity in which to deposit her eggs. The eggs, which resemble rubbery ping-pong balls, are laid at a rate of two to three at a time. Females will lay anywhere from 80-120 eggs per nest, depending on their species.

A great deal of care is put into camouflaging the nest once the eggs are laid. The mother will pack sand over the egg cavity and will then use her front flippers to disguise the body pit. She throws sand in all directions, making the nest virtually impossible to recognize. When the mother turtle is content that the nest is concealed, she will head back to sea. She will repeat this procedure three to five times in a single nesting season, but will, in most cases, not return to nest again for two to three years.

The eggs will incubate within the nest for approximately 60 days. The average temperature of the nest during the course of incubation will determine whether or not the young hatchlings will be male or female. Females result from warmer temperatures; males develop when temperatures are cooler. Many factors such as the quality of the sand, weather and beach development can influence the incubation temperature of the eggs.

Emergence/ Boil

When the hatchlings have fully developed, they will hatch and crawl their way up and out of the nest en masse. This event is called a “boil,” as it resembles a pot boiling over with sea turtles. Emerging hatchlings obtain bearings to the ocean by locating the horizon over the water, which is brighter than the landward horizon, and they scurry in that direction to their new home. Once these hatchlings reach the sea, their activities are a mystery to scientists. It is believed that they find floating masses predators. Before the hatchlings leave the beach, they imprint the location so they can return again as adults.

The first hatchlings of the season emerge from nests approximately eight weeks after the first nesting of the season, and this activity continues for up to eight weeks after the final nesting of the season. In Chennai, hatchlings generally emerge throughout the spring and early winter. It is a myth that hatchlings emerge only around the time of the full moon. Hatchlings ready to emerge wait just beneath the sand surface until conditions become cool. This temperature cue prompts them to emerge primarily at night, although some late-afternoon and early-morning emergences have been recorded.

The apparent brightness and glare of artificial lighting often leads hatchlings astray. To a hatchling on a beach, an artificial light source appears bright because it is relatively close by, yet it is not intense enough to brighten the sky and landscape. The resulting glare makes the direction of the artificial source appear overwhelmingly bright—so much brighter than the other directions that hatchlings will ignore other visual cues and move toward the artificial light no matter where it is relative to the sea.

Sea turtle hatchlings have an innate tendency to move in the brightest direction. Under natural circumstances, the brightest direction is most often the open view of the night sky over, and reflected by, the ocean. This sea-finding behaviour can take place during any phase and position of the moon, which indicates that hatchlings do not depend on lunar light to lead them seaward. Hatchlings also tend to move away from darkly silhouetted objects associated with the dune profile and vegetation.

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