Bangladeshi marine rescuers prepare to bury a dead olive ridley sea turtle at a beach in Cox's Bazar on January 29, 2025. (Photo by Suzauddin Rubel / AFP)
Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh: Bangladeshi scientists are probing the deaths of more than 80 turtles found washed up on the beach over the past week, a government marine research institute said Thursday.
Olive ridley sea turtles are a relatively small and abundant species found in tropical waters the world over and can live for up to 50 years in the wild.
But their numbers are declining and they have periodically been victim to mass die-off events, including earlier this month in nearby southern India.
More than 80 percent of the turtles discovered along the coast were females coming ashore to lay eggs, Mohammad Shimul Bhuiyan at the Bangladesh Oceanographic Research Institute told AFP.
"We need more time to determine the cause," he added.
Sharif Uddin, a scientist at Malaysia-based marine research organisation WorldFish, said the likely culprit was overfishing and the use of sea-sweeping trawler nets.
"Turtles float on the water to breathe, but once they get entangled in fishing nets, they remain underwater for too long and suffocate," he rold AFP.
"It's tragic that they come here to reproduce and end up dying."
Abid Hossain of the Bangladesh Marine Fisheries Association said that a disruption to the turtle population risked severe damage to local marine ecology.
"Last year, the marine catch was halved due to an increase in jellyfish in the seawater," he told AFP.
"Turtles eat jellyfish, which helps fish larvae survive. If we want to sustain our fish stocks, we need to save the turtles."
