Turtles nested in record numbers at Great Nicobar project site: RTI reply confirms Scroll report

In March, Scroll reported that sea turtles had nested in record numbers on the beaches of Great Nicobar Island’s Galathea Bay during the 2025-’26 nesting season.

Only the previous month, the National Green Tribunal dismissed challenges to the construction of a mega-infrastructure project on the island, asserting that no part of the project site is a CRZ-1A area – a category of coastal land that has maximum protection under law on account of its ecological importance.

Now, official records from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Forest Department accessed via a Right to Information application have confirmed the Scroll report.

The March report, based on photographs accessed from Galathea Bay and from conversations with locals, had suggested about 1,000 turtle nests in the area over the November to March nesting period.

The data obtained via the RTI application puts the number of nests in Galathea Bay beach at 997, with 889 being of the leatherback turtle. The other 108 are of the Olive Ridley turtle.

These are numbers for the nests that have been re-located from the beach to the protected hatcheries that are managed by forest staff. The actual number of nests...

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