Who is Olive Ridley?

This is Olive Ridley  – a turtle that was once a regular visitor to Mumbai’s shoreline. Every year the turtles would use the stretch of beach in Versova to lay their eggs and hatch their little ones. In fact 35 beaches in my home state of Maharashtra is the nursery for these endangered water babies though Odisha has the most nestings.

You can read more about  all this and Olive Ridley’s Mumbai connection  here. 

Now Versova Beach is far away from where I live but having gone to the beach as a child, (I remember going there for a picnic) I felt bad that pollution kept the turtles away from this nesting ground. Those were the days when people actually went for a picnic.

Hero of the hour

Now thanks to the efforts of Afroz Shah, the Olive Ridley turtles have shown up once again on our shores . You can read more about his story here.

I think Afroz is a hero.  He didn’t just shrug his shoulders. He bent down and began picking up the rubbish on the beach. One empty plastic bottle after another. Week after week .

And it was no easy task as the officials were not at all keen on helping him . In fact, certain elements on the beach actually made his life miserable

Yet he persisted and today the turtles are back.

 

Thank You Afroz for cleaning up the beach.

I’m participating in We are the World Blogfest where bloggers share positive acts of humanity in life, in the news, or social media on the last FRIDAY of each month.

Many thanks to this month’s  co-hosts   Belinda Witzenhausen,  Sylvia McGrath, Sylvia Stein  Shilpa Garg, Eric Lahti . 

This was a year long challenge and I’d like to thank 

 Carol Walsh,Chrissie Parker, Damyanti Biswas, Emerald Barnes, Eric Lahti, Inderpreet Kaur Uppal, Kate Powell, Lynn Hallbrooks, Mary Giese, Michelle Wallace, Peter Nena, Rich Weatherly, Roshan Radhakrishnan, Simon Falk, Susan Scott 

who have co-hosted the challenge too in different months.

I enjoyed participating in this challenge and hope you enjoyed reading these posts too! 

Be happy!