Goa's Canary in the Mineshaft

Written by Anna da Costa / 31 January 2009 / Read Anna da Costa's latest blog entries.

Awakening whilst the still blue cloak of night rested on Goa's shores, we made our way two hours south to the last turtle nesting site in this paradise state, close to Agonda. The journey was idyllic; as the sun rose over the yawning palms and bright green rice paddies, painting the sky with red, then pink, then gold, we heard from Clinton Vaz, our amazingly knowledgeable guide, about Goa's rich biodiversity and sustainability challenges - which are multiple.

This pale yellow powder-sanded beach, with lapping waves, gentle breeze and curving blue horizon, awoke memories of my childhood, spent on beaches like this across Goa, watching fishermen bring in their slow catch, picking up crystals, marveling at starfish and beautiful shells. This time, it told a troubling story, which like a canary in the mineshaft, harkened to something sinister and deeply change-making afoot.

Once home to thousands of nesting sites, this last Goan beach had a pitiful four nest sites this year. Not only this, the nesting period was three months late. Each nest was cradled in a boxed and netted contraption, watched over by volunteers 24 hours of the day to protect them from dogs, people, and other predators. Even with all of this protection, the likelihood of hatching is less than 50%.

Averted from the beaches by bright lights that now plaster Goa's sea front, struggling with increasingly compacted sand from the heavy beach traffic, and managing the heavy sedimentation that infuses Goa's coastal waters from intensive mining, turtle nesting has dwindled in the last few decades. In addition to this the change in breeding times and the reduction in hatching success indicate a disruption in annual life cycle patterns brought on by unseasonal sea temperature fluctuations and food availability, both impacts of climate change.

Something especially close to my heart, dwindling biodiversity, the multitude of life forms that fill our sea, land and air, is a climate impact rarely touched on. Yet it represents the very substance upon which we exist, and provides us with our physical, emotional and spiritual food. As temperatures rise and conditions change, each species, plant, animal and other, responds in a unique way, causing the tightly linked relationships that hold an ecosystem together become unlinked.

The plight of the turtle here in Goa signals a much greater species collapse taking place worldwide that is the result not only of overexploitation, introductions of non-native species, and habitat loss but now, climate change as well. Few people are aware that with the current rates of species extinction, we are presently experiencing the sixth mass extinction of life, the last of which, at the end of the Permian era, saw an extinction of 98% of species on Earth. If we don't act rapidly to reverse this trend (which we absolutely still can!), we will lose the very substance upon which we exist.