Featured image: Dr. Joana Hancock is working to protect the sea turtles in Kenya | Photo provided by Dr. Joana Hancock

The Olive Ridley Project is on a mission to protect sea turtles in Kenya

by Rupi Mangat

A dive with Dr. Joana Hancock of the Olive Ridley Project in Kenya is an unforgettable experience. In her underwater world, she’s on a first-name basis with many of the sea turtles she’s so familiar with, like the green turtle Mzuri (good in Kiswahili) and the hawksbill turtle John Koho. 

It’s a typical sweltering hot day in Diani, the coastal town on Kenya’s south coast, famed for its powder white beach and tropical warm blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Protected by the reef, it makes swimming in the lagoon one of the safest spots in the world, in part thanks to the turtles that help in keeping the coral reef and seagrass ecosystems healthy. Joana’s just surfaced from an exciting dive with clients, and after a quick change from her wetsuit, we’re chatting about sea turtles.

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In her teens, she began working with organizations involved with marine life, which led to her career choice. Armed with a Ph.D., she’s one of the most respected names in sea turtle conservation.  In 2018, she joined the Olive Ridley Project in Diani Beach in Kenya as a Research Coordinator and is currently member of Central Africa’s sea turtle conservation network (RASTOMA) collaborating with projects in São Tomé and Príncipe, Cameroon, Republic of Congo amongst others. 

It’s no secret that the sea turtle, this gentle mariner of the seas, which has outlived the dinosaur, is swimming against the tide today. It’s estimated that of every thousand that hatch, only one makes it to adulthood.

But even before sea turtle nests hatch, they are raided by predators like monitor lizards and people. Once born, the tiny turtles make a dash for the ocean to escape predators both on land and from the air, like birds. In the ocean, they spend their first years in the safety of their pelagic ‘nurseries’, which include sargassum mats and flotsam! As they grow into a size bigger than a dinner plate, they search for coastal habitats such as mangrove forests, seagrass meadows and the coral reefs where they grow into young adults.

The impact of development on sea turtles in Kenya

These same waters that the sea turtles love are also what humans love. Holiday homes and hotels now clutter the once vast beaches where the females laid their nests above the high-water tide mark, returning to the same nesting beach or the same region they were hatched in, Joana says.

And when the turtles hatch at night, they run towards the ocean, which even on the darkest night is the brightest area – but not today. Attracted to the bright lights on the coast from human establishments, the newly hatched run in the opposite direction – a fatal mistake, where in the course of the day, their muscles desiccate.

Once in the water, the ever-increasing water sports for tourists are a concern with turtles suffering injuries from accidental hits from boats and or harassment by divers. But the real problem comes by catch in fishermen’s nets, or entanglement in nets lost or abandoned at sea by fishers. In time, these become ‘ghost nets’ that the turtles and other creatures swim into and get trapped underwater. Turtles, being reptiles, must surface for air or they drown.

The list is endless, and also includes today’s climate change crisis and water contamination.

“We are seeing turtles with tumours because of contaminated water,” says Joana.

Their survival has become Joana’s raison d’être. “The ocean without turtles will be a disaster,” states the sea turtle biologist.

In tide with the turtles: The Olive Ridley Project (ORP) in Kenya

Like the ancient mariner that is the turtle, Joana has swum the world’s oceans with the Atlantic being her favourite, “even though it’s rough and cold.” Now in her 40s, she’s worked on sea turtle projects in Greece, Costa Rica, Panama, islands in West Africa and now Kenya on the East African shores. Her specialty is spearheading projects and training local organizations in sea turtle conservation.

She started managing the Olive Ridley Project (ORP) in Kenya in 2018, an organization with representation in several locations in the Indian Ocean, and “named after the Olive Ridley sea turtle, the most abundant species in the ocean,” she says.

The ORP established its presence in Kenya following an invitation from the owners of Nomad Beach Resort. They had encountered the ORP in the Maldives during a diving holiday and proposed a collaborative project with Diving the Crab dive centre, situated at Diani Beach.

A primary activity of the project involves collecting underwater research data on sea turtles by photographing them in their natural habitats, thereby obtaining firsthand information about their behaviour and ecology. Joana, who has recently become the organization’s Research Coordinator, oversees the collection and analysis of all data, ensuring the photo-ID database is meticulously curated. The Photo-ID project is a non-invasive, low-cost, citizen-science-friendly approach that can be applied to any species whose individuals have unique skin patterns or other features that are stable over time.

It allows researchers to obtain discrete information about individuals’ locations at a given time, which is essential for the conservation management of endangered species.

“In the first year in 2018, we photographed 70 turtles in the Diani-Chale Marine National Reserve,” she says. Today, there are more than 700 turtles identified, with photographs also submitted by citizen scientists. It’s no wonder she knows so many turtles by their face. ​​The best part? People can even adopt and name some of these wild sea turtles for a small fee. The funds help sea turtle conservation, while adopters get email updates on their turtle each time it is sighted.

Kenya’s coastline stretches close to 600 kilometres along the Indian Ocean. However, there was almost no data on sea turtles along the coast. As ancient mariners, adults, especially the females, migrate across vast oceans and yet almost nothing is known of where the Kenyan-born sea turtles swim away to and thus, not giving the whole picture of the threats to these populations and what projects and policies can be developed.

But with all the sea turtle images coming in, Joana and the team realized that the Diani Chale Marine National Reserve was a crucial habitat. Over the last five years, Diani’s Green turtle population has grown by 5 per cent!

“The reef is a development ground for the green and hawksbill turtles, like a kindergarten,” Joana says. “Once they become adults, they migrate, but we don’t know where to. They can migrate for thousands of kilometres.”

Turning communities into Sea Turtle Ambassadors

“We asked ourselves, ‘What can we do to improve the reef and safety of the sea turtles?” said Joana.

The way forward was to involve the local community in sea turtle conservation.

In 2023, the ORP-Kenya team started a community outreach project called the Sea Turtle Ambassador Programme with 9 beach management units (BMUs) stretching north and south of the Diani-Chale Marine National Reserve. The program fosters active involvement of community members in sea turtle conservation and bycatch mitigation by creating awareness on sea turtles and safe and legal fishing practices.

The programme is already showing results. The number of BMUs participating in this initiative has grown to 9, with over 100 community members completing their training, receiving certifications as Sea Turtle Ambassadors and becoming local stewards of sea turtle conservation. Hopefully, we will soon observe a reduction in turtles caught as bycatch in the local fishers’ nets.

Ultimately, as the program is extended to other marine protected areas in Kenya, it will allow the identification of sea turtle movements between sites, within and outside Kenya’s coastal habitats and marine protected areas.

Joana’s favourite turtle species

It’s the Leatherback Sea Turtle. “It’s the most ancient of the sea turtle species, even before the advent of the dinosaurs,” informs the turtle woman. “They are the largest of the sea turtles and can dive one kilometre down to feed on jellyfish and plankton. Without the Leatherback, there would be an outbreak of jellyfish which would destroy fish stocks, the coral reefs, and possibly even oceans as we know them.”

To learn more about the Olive Ridley Project in Kenya, visit https://oliveridleyproject.org/. 

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