Oyeronke Adegbile stands by a wooden boat at a beach in Lagos, the biggest coastal city and the economic hub of Nigeria, smiling and listening to several fishermen pouring out their complaints about the hardship of life as they are busy picking fishes off their fishing net.

Adegbile is here on a beach cleaning activity, part of the efforts of a non-governmental organization she founded to promote marine protection in local communities.

The 40-year-old marine researcher with Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR) is widely referred to as "Madam Sea Turtle" by the coastal communities she frequents together with her colleagues because of her seemingly "overzealous" dedication to the protection of sea turtles.

However, the "Madam Sea Turtle" always finds herself caught in the quandary between conservation and survival, and the fight to protect marine life and the tradition and livelihood of a vast majority of people living in coastal communities.

Adegbile did not know there are sea turtles in Nigeria until 2009 when she went for a field trip as a NIOMR researcher in a fishing community in Lekki, a coastal area of Lagos, and saw a sea turtle shell.

Adegbile recalled when she graduated from the University of Lagos in 2002, she traveled for an international conference on marine protection in Britain.

"One of the participants at the conference asked me if there were sea turtles in Nigeria and prior to that time I had never heard of sea turtles being in Nigeria. So, I said we didn't have them and I don't know anything about them," Adegbile told Xinhua.

However, she got back to Nigeria with that question lingering on her mind until her field trip in 2009.

"I was able to establish that we have sea turtles nesting in Lagos. We formed a little group with my colleagues and we started going out to the coastal communities to ask if they have found any sea turtles," she said.

The answer was affirmative.

Later, Adegbile was involved in a sea turtle nesting survey for her PhD research, so she went to coastal communities more frequently to check where they nested.

"I realized that the government vehicle was not moving fast enough for the sea turtle work, so I decided to start a cause around the sea turtle. That was when I started the cause on sea turtle monitoring," she said.

Nice one