| schema:text
| - Fact Check: Are sea turtles making beeline for Mumbai beach after cleanup?
Many social media users are claiming that clean beaches have led to sea turtles laying eggs along the Mumbai beach this week. However, India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found that an incident of a single sea turtle laying eggs did happen last year, but no such incident has taken place this week or even this year.
Listen to Story
India Today Fact Check
Photo is from Vishakhapatnam. In Versova, 80 sea turtles hatched last year and not this year.
Did thousands of sea turtles hatch along the Mumbai coast this week? With the ongoing beach cleanup drives being undertaken by volunteers over the last few years, many social media users are claiming that clean beaches have led to sea turtles laying eggs along the Mumbai beach this week.
Facebook user Evan Siegel on Monday evening posted a collage of two photos and said, It took 96 weeks and thousands of volunteers to clean up Versova Beach in Mumbai, India. The payoff? Hundreds of thousands of seaturtles hatching this week. First time in decades. Anything can be cleaned!
While one of the pictures in the post showed mounds of garbage and said Before, the other showed hundreds of tiny sea turtles heading for the water and is marked After.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found that an incident of a single sea turtle laying eggs did happen last year, but no such incident has taken place this week or even this year.
Many Facebook users also posted the same claim. The archived version of the post can be seen here.
AFWA investigation
AFWA did a reverse search of the photo marked as After. Yandex threw up similar images and the largest image had a watermark saying Photo Copyright VSPCA.
Searching the Internet for VSPCA, we found that it stands for Visakha Society for Protection and Care of Animals which is based out of Visakhapatnam. AFWA spoke to the founder of the organisation, Pradeep Kumar Nath, who said, This photo belongs to VSPCA. It is illegal for others to claim it. This photo shows more than 200 Olive Ridley babies which we release every night into the sea. Olive Ridley turtles mainly come to the east coast of India. The west coast gets green turtles and two other types.
A large number of Olive Ridleys do come to Vishakhapatnam and this year itself, the city’s beach witnessed release of about 70,000 turtles into the sea about which The News Minute also reported.
The Mumbai connect
AFWA found that on Versova beach in March 2018, one female Olive Ridley turtle had indeed laid eggs and 80 of the hatchlings travelled to the sea. This was witnessed by some volunteers working there who clicked pictures and videos of the same. The Times of India has details about the incident.
AFWA also spoke to N Vasudevan, additional principal chief conservator of forest in the Maharashtra government, who confirmed that the hatching of the turtles had taken place at Versova beach last year and not this year.
Garbage on Versova beach, however, is not an unusual sight. Actor Pooja Bedi tweeted photos of Versova beach on Monday evening showing the garbage strewn around.
Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000
You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)