Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

For months on end, he would maroon himself on remote islands — no phone, no company, no fanfare. Just a transistor radio, a hammock, and the possibility of seeing a turtle. It was enough. For Satish Bhaskar, the joy lay not in discovery as much as in the quiet act of observing: measuring tracks in the sand, recording the dimensions of nests, counting eggs in painstaking detail. “I am glad I did the things I did,” he once said, without drama.

India’s coastline — stretching thousands of kilometers, wild and fragmentary — was largely unmapped in terms of sea turtle activity when Bhaskar began his work in the late 1970s. He resolved to walk it. All of it. By foot. Over 19 years, he did just that, surveying more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) and producing reports that would become foundational to marine conservation in the country. His work was not part of any grand institutional plan. It was solitary, intuitive and, above all, sustained.

He was shy, almost evasive, when asked about himself. Science was easier. So was silence. When filmmaker Taira Malaney sought to document his life, she found a man willing to share data but reluctant to share emotion. Over time, he opened up — not out of vanity, but perhaps out of recognition that his story, quietly told, might serve a purpose greater than himself. Turtle Walker, the resulting film, took seven years to make. Bhaskar never saw the final cut.

His legacy, though, is visible in the work of others. In the Andamans, researchers still consult his notes. The turtles he once tracked continue to return to the same beaches. The film, now earning accolades abroad, does not eulogize him. It does something better: it shows how his quiet conviction helped build a bridge between science and care, between a man and a species. “It’s not the end of the story,” Bhaskar once said of his work. Indeed, it isn’t.

Editor’s note: Satish Bhaskar is the subject of the 75-minute documentary Turtle Walker, directed by Taira Malaney. It was screened at the DC Environmental Film Festival 2025 (DCEFF 2025) on March 26. Mongabay is a media partner for DCEFF 2025 and has interviewed some filmmakers as part of this collaboration.

Mongabay India’s Priyanka Shankar spoke with Taira Malaney about Satish Bhaskar and the making of the documentary in “How one researcher walked thousands of miles along India’s shores to conserve sea turtles.” Bhaskar passed away in March 2023.

Banner image: An archival image of Satish Bhaskar holding a hawksbill turtle. Image courtesy of Satish Bhaskar.