The mass death of once-endangered olive ridley turtles in January has prompted an increase in wildlife patrols and a crackdown on fishing boats

More than 1,100 dead olive ridley sea turtles have washed ashore on the beaches of Tamil Nadu state in southern India this January.

“I never heard [of] such large numbers of turtles stranded at any beaches of Tamil Nadu at least in the last three decades,” Kuppusamy Sivakumar, an ecology professor at Pondicherry University said.