Police arrested 40 sea-going fishermen from the olive ridley turtle concentration zones along the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary in a major crackdown on illegal fishing on Monday. Patrol on illegal fishing has been intensified in view of the turtles’ mass nesting. Officials intercepted five deep-sea trawlers during an early morning crackdown on Monday and arrested the 40 fishermen. Fishing prohibition has been imposed along 20km stretch from the Dhamra river mouth to the Devi river mouth since November 1. Since then, around 350 sea-going fishermen have been arrested. Besides, 70 trawlers have also been seized for violation of the Orissa Marine Fisheries Regulation Act. The crackdown on unlawful sea fishing has been stepped up to make the turtles’ concentration zone free from human interference. The forest department has deployed two high-speed boats to patrol the marine waters of the sanctuary. To ensure the safety of endangered sea turtles, 16 patrolling camps have been set up off the coast in Kendrapara and Jagatsinghpur districts. Of them, two are off-shore camps located at Babubali and Agarnashi, which fall under Kendrapara district. The turtles, accorded the Schedule-I animal status under the Wildlife Protection Act for their highly-threatened status, get entangled in the fishing nets and die of asphyxiation. The turtles also perish in large numbers getting hit by the fast-moving propellers of the fishing trawlers. In another development, female turtles are being seen loitering close to the beach near the Gahirmatha seawaters in large numbers ahead of their mass nesting season. Last year, 6.04 lakh turtles had turned up for their annual mass nesting sojourn in March. The female turtles had emerged from the sea to crawl on to the beach and dig pits to lay eggs. “The mass nesting is expected to start any time from now. The female turtles have been found congregating in seawater within a kilometre’s distance from the nesting beach. The nesting ground at outer Wheelers’ Island of Gahirmatha is perfectly ideal for nesting with the beach getting elongated following natural accretion process. The weather is also ambient now for the turtles’ nesting,” said Rajnagar mangrove (wildlife) divisional forest officer Bimal Prasanna Acharya.