The Ontological Choreography of Conservation Practice at a Marine Turtle Rookery in India

The Rushikulya beach in eastern India is considered to be an important rookery (nesting site) for a species of migratory marine turtle, the olive ridleys Lepidochelys olivacea, because it is one of a handful of sites around the world where an arribada or mass-nesting event occurs. During an arribada, thousands of ridleys nest simultaneously over a small section of the beach, and several weeks later, millions of hatchlings emerge from these nests and crawl into the sea. Given the uniqueness of this phenomenon, conservation programmes have emphasised the monitoring and protection of ridleys during an arribada. In Rushikulya, this involves an assemblage of multiple actors, including biologists, their local assistants, and staff of the Odisha Forest Department. In this article, I use the concept of ontological choreography, drawn from multispecies scholarship, to focus attention on how members of this assemblage bring together different ontological orders, mainly nature and the individual self, to protect the ridleys. Further, I use this concept to direct attention to the hybrid nature of conservation practice—that it can simultaneously be affective, embodied, performative, sensory and technical. Overall, this article demonstrates how multispecies approaches can enrich social studies of conservation.