Hawke's Bay or Hawkesbay is a beach in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan located 20 km at south-west of Karachi. This beach is named after Bladen Wilmer Hawke, who owned a beach house here in 1930s.
Hundreds of people visit here daily for swimming, camel and horse riding and for vacations. Huts can be rented, and if you wish to spend the whole day, kids may enjoy playing with sand, horse and/or camel ride.
Saturday and Sundays are busy days due to weekend, otherwise week days are relaxing. This beach is known for being a nesting ground of Green sea turtle and Olive Ridley sea turtle during winter months.
The Green Turtle is the largest of the hard-shelled sea turtles (the Leatherback Dermochelys can grow much larger) although size, weight, and carapace shape can vary markedly between different populations.
During autumn, after the monsoons when the sea is calmer the visitors sit quietly on the beach on a moonlit night and watch to see the turtles come up and repeat what they have been doing for generations.
That is, laying their eggs and leaving them in the enclosing warmth of the soft sand for the heat of the sun to incubate till young hatchlings, perfect miniatures of the adult, emerge and scramble to the sea.
The Sind Wildlife Department in collaboration with WWF-Pakistan is working on a project for safe release of turtle hatchling to the Arabian sea since 1980's.. The egg are carefully kept in closed enclosures and released after the hatchlings are hatched.
Unfortunately, the Wildlife Department is shorts of funds and faces many problems. Only 5,000 turtles have been tagged during the past 20 years of the project, and scores of nests go unnoticed every year.
As a result, stray dogs eat many eggs, some get disturbed due to the movement of humans and fail to mature, whereas hundreds of hatchlings die every year after being crushed under the wheels of moving vehicles.
In addition, many threats exist in the region including beach development, fishing activities, noise from neighbouring villages, pollution from a nearby harbour and exploitation of turtle products.