© 2025 WGCU News
PBS and NPR for Southwest Florida
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Greetings from Guhagar, India, where newly hatched turtles get some help into the sea

Diaa Hadid, Jackie Lay/NPR

Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR's international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.

India has some pretty successful efforts to protect the olive ridley sea turtle, a vulnerable species which nests on the country's long coastlines. Every nesting season, thousands of females dig holes on the seashore with their flippers, and each one lays dozens of eggs inside. To keep them safe from threats like dogs and poachers, activists collect the eggs and incubate them in protected hatcheries.

After they hatch, activists collect them in tubs — like these little guys I photographed in April along the coast south of Mumbai — and then the baby turtles are tipped out onto the sand, so they can crawl into the Arabian Sea.

Tiny, slow and clumsy — these hatchlings are an easy snack for predators. But for this one moment, as they crawl into the waves, they're protected by conservationists, who shoo away marauding crabs, seagulls and dogs. Sometimes, tourists may watch at a distance. And pretty quickly, the tourists start cheering on the hatchlings to get into the sea. The tourists clap when they're finally in. It's like a victory for the little guy, and every time I think about it, it makes me smile.

See more photos from around the world:

Copyright 2025 NPR

Diaa Hadid chiefly covers Pakistan and Afghanistan for NPR News. She is based in NPR's bureau in Islamabad. There, Hadid and her team were awarded a Murrow in 2019 for hard news for their story on why abortion rates in Pakistan are among the highest in the world.
Trusted by over 30,000 local subscribers

Local News, Right Sized for Your Morning

Quick briefs when you are busy, deeper explainers when it matters, delivered early morning and curated by WGCU editors.

  • Environment
  • Local politics
  • Health
  • And more

Free and local. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

More from WGCU
  • Temperatures will be about 20 degrees below average for this time of year, and the wind will make it feel even colder! How long will it last?
  • Gray Catbirds are in a bird family known as the “Mimidae” – because they mimic other birds, other animals, and even mechanical sounds. Other members of their family in Florida include the Brown Thrasher and the Northern Mockingbird – two excellent mimics that we often see and hear year-round as they feed, sing, and nest in relatively open vegetation. They often mimic the vocalizations of other bird species and it has been suggested that their mimicry may send the message that the area is crowded – and cause other birds to search for food elsewhere.
  • Personal connections, aggressive lobbying and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions fueled the rapid rise of an obscure school bus camera vendor, BusPatrol, which quickly became a major player in a niche industry that didn’t exist in Florida until last year. That success represented a remarkable turnaround for a company with a troubled history of allegations that it values revenue over public safety and opportunity over ethics. BusPatrol’s reversal in fortunes, already evident in other states, echoes the comeback of Florida state Rep. Vicki Lopez, once a down-and-out Lee County commissioner, with whom BusPatrol is inextricably linked.