Students' Sea Turtle Conservation Network

The SSTCN Team

V.Arun has been with SSTCN from 1997 and has been coordinator since 2002. Since the time he joined, his focus has been in reaching out to the public to involve the larger community in safeguarding the interests of the turtles. Towards this he holds discussions with various groups of people both on the walks and in schools, colleges etc

Arun qualified as an engineer and worked in the field for seven years. He then switched to teaching and worked as an Environment Education teacher in the Krishnamurti Foundation School, Chennai for 12 years.

Now he lives in Thiruvannamalai in an organic farm and manages an afforestation project and works with local children on environmental education projects.

He along with friends has been running a small farm based school since 2009.

Akila Balu has been with SSTCN since 2005 and is coordinator along with Arun. She is also involved in the afforestation and school programs in Tiruvannamalai.

She is qualified with an M Phil in economics and has taught in schools and colleges abroad for many years. She managed a music company for 3 years. She is a student of Shri.Lalgudi Jayaraman and has performed in various places. She has now chosen to work with environmental issues and social upliftment causes. She worked for a couple of years with WWF.

Akila, along with some family members and with CIKS (Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems) is also involved in a village upliftment program in Alangadu village near Sirkazhi, in Nagapattinam district.

Adhith got into turtle walks when as a student in The School, KFI, he got exposed to it. From the age of 11 he has been passionate about turtles and has spent most of his time associated with turtle related activities in one form or the other. He is a bit of a legend while on the field in locating tracks and nests and he is totally hands on in his approach and is meticulous in hatchery management and record keeping.

He has a masters’ degree in Marine management from the University of York in England. He has worked with turtle conservation projects in Orissa, Costa Rica and now in the Andaman Islands along with Kartik Shanker, one of the founders of SSTCN and now an acknowledged expert on sea turtles.

Sanjiv Gopal was coordinator of the Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network from 1997-2001 and held the group together during some of its toughest years when turtle nesting numbers drastically dropped on the Chennai coast.

‘Sanju’ as he is known to friends,  patrolled the beach stretch from Besant Nagar to Neelankarai  with a rare combination of passionate energy and commitment every week night through the entire turtle season during his entire college years. In all, he was involved for 8 years.

On graduating from college he joined Greenpeace where he has been working as an Oceans campaigner since 2002, battling some of India’s worst environmental issues with his usual energy and flair.