Agartala, August 26 (TIWN): Pollution levels at Kalyansagar Lake in Tripurasundari Temple, Udaipur was found to have risen today in yet another note of alarm to the pond ecology as over thirty fishes were found dead, floating on the water Tuesday morning.

Asked about the issue, Sub-Divisional Magistrate (Udaipur) Ajit Debnath said that he had visited the spot alongwith an expert team from the Department of Fisheries.

The team collected water samples from the pond for future experimentation, the SDM said.

A delegation of pond ecology and amphibian experts including Director of Turtle Research and Conservation from Austria - Peter Praschay, turtle expert Merey Vaughan, Thad Stewart, environmentalists, construction engineering experts and Rupali Ghosh, an Indian environmentalist and ecologist visited Lake Kalyansagar earlier in June this year to examine the condition of the Boshtam turtles.

The international media grabbed the scare after a report of the IUCN declared the N nigricans – soft shel turtles, commonly known as Boashtami turtles as ‘extinct from the wild’.

The team submitted a report to the state government following primary tests on the Kalyansagar Lake.  The temple authorities stopped use of the pond water for puja purposes in the 1990s after its water was found contaminated. The authorities cemented its banks in an attempt to stop the contamination, only to make it worse.