Debating the Ban on Harvesting Wild Sea Turtles in The Bahamas

by Larry Smith

The turtle is a central figure in aboriginal cultures. Many Amerindian creation myths say our world is carried through the universe on the back of a turtle - one of the most ancient and longest-lived animals on Earth.

And that's not a bad image because today we know that sea turtles navigate for thousands of miles around the oceans, apparently by sensing the direction and intensity of the Earth's magnetic field.

But it is hardly surprising that they figured so prominently in early legends. Extrapolating from historical accounts, scientists have determined that there were once more than 100 million Green and Hawksbill turtles - the most common varieties - in the wider Caribbean.

"Infinite numbers" of Green turtles were reported off the Cayman Islands in the 17th century. There were “inexhaustible supplies" off the Nicaraguan coast in 1827. And export data from the 1900s produce an estimate of a million adult Hawksbills in the Bahamas alone.

Clearly, surviving populations are only a fraction of one per cent of historical numbers.

But that is not the whole picture. Scientists have identified 59 historic Green turtle nesting sites and 55 historic Hawksbill turtle rookeries in the wider Caribbean region. Hunting and development have eliminated 25 of these sites and about half of those left have fewer than 10 nesting females or only rare nesting.

By far the most important rookery in the region is Tortuguero in Costa Rica, where tens of thousands of Green turtles still lay their eggs every year. The survival of this ancient nesting beach is due mostly to the efforts of a University of Florida biologist named Archie Carr, who effectively launched the turtle conservation movement in the 1950s.

Carr began a tagging and monitoring programme at Tortuguero, which eventually led to the area being made a national park. His popular book, The Windward Road, drew worldwide attention to the decline of sea turtles. And at the time of his death some 20 years ago he was the world's leading authority on these unusual animals.

Carr has an interesting Bahamian connection. In the 1960s, he started a project called Operation Green Turtle to distribute hatchlings via US Navy seaplanes to a variety of Caribbean locations with the aim of establishing new nesting areas. One of those sites was a disused turtle ranch on Inagua, which was later leased by the government to The Bahamas National Trust as the Union Creek Reserve.

Although such re-seeding efforts were later found to be a waste of resources, important turtle research has continued at Union Creek up to the present under the leadership of Dr Karen Bjorndal, one of Carr's students who now heads the prestigious Archie Carr Centre for Sea Turtle Research at the University of Florida and is an advisor to the BNT.

The Reserve is a remote tidal creek surrounded by mangroves and enclosing extensive seagrass pastures. Seagrass is the primary diet of Green turtles, which were once the most prolific as well as the most hunted of the world's seven turtle species, all of which are now either threatened or endangered. And scientists at Union Creek are trying to find ways to help them survive.

Their unusual life cycles point up the difficulty of this research. For example, Green turtle hatchlings swim out to sea from their Caribbean nesting beaches and circulate around the Atlantic on floating mats of sargassum weed for up to a dozen years, feeding mostly on jellyfish. At a certain size they move into coastal areas (like Union Creek) and begin foraging on sea grass, reaching sexual maturity within 30 years. Then they swim back to their original rookeries to mate and lay eggs.

Bjorndal was in Nassau recently to give a talk on turtles at the BNT headquarters on Village Road, where she wowed the audience with tales of diapering turtles to study their poop: "In 1974 I spent a year sifting through feces and found that the Green turtle could digest vegetation as well as a cow can - something that was not known back then. From that we were able to estimate the carrying capacity for Green turtles of the Caribbean seagrass beds."

At Union Creek, Bjorndal and others use DNA analyses to determine links between foraging turtle populations in the Bahamas and rookeries around the Atlantic (there are only scattered reports of turtle nesting in our islands). They investigate the role of turtles in maintaining marine ecosystems. And they use data from tagged turtles to determine growth rates and survival probabilities. Satellite telemetry is used to determine movements from Bahamian foraging grounds to other areas in the region.

"I go to Inagua every year to tag, weigh and measure turtles." Bjondal said. "The source rookeries for these turtles are Costa Rica, Mexico, Florida, South America, Africa and Ascencion Island in the Atlantic. Turtles are found in all areas of the Bahamas  and they stay in Union Creek for three to four years. But when they leave their survival drops sharply because of the high take threat in the region. We have no idea why they move around as they do, but that's why we say that it takes an ocean basin to save the turtle. Individual countries can't do it alone."

Five species of turtle migrate through the Bahamas. The Green turtle is the largest of the hardshell turtles and the only herbivore. Its meat has been prized for centuries. The Loggerhead is next in size and eats mollusks and crabs. There has been a 50 per cent drop in Loggerhead turtle nesting in the past 10 years. The critically endangered Hawksbill eats sponges and other reef animals and is sought after for its shell, from which jewelry and ornaments are made.

The Leatherback is a soft-shelled turtle that lives in the open ocean and feeds only on jellyfish. It can weigh up to a ton but is rarely seen in the Bahamas. The omnivorous Olive Ridley is the smallest and rarest turtle in Bahamian waters - there has only been one sighting west of Andros. The Kemps Ridley is the most endangered species of all, with only a single nesting site in Mexico and a very restricted range.

Besides being caught by weekend as well as commercial fishermen, sea turtles face many other threats, including boat strikes, habitat loss to development, marine pollution and beach erosion. Huge numbers of turtles are drowned annually by longline and drift net fishermen. That kind of fishing is not allowed in the Bahamas, but the Department of Marine Resources reports that varying amounts of Green turtles and Loggerheads are harvested commercially each year - about 10,000 pounds in 2006 alone.

But these figures are likely to be gross underestimates. Official landings take no account of non-commercial harvesting, and even the fully protected Hawksbills are still killed locally. A few years ago in Harbour Island, a researcher noted at least 25 Hawksbill and Green turtle shells, mostly from juveniles, on sale in a straw market. And poaching of turtles in Bahamian waters by foreign fishermen (especially Dominicans) is a serious threat.

Ever since Archie Carr first warned of an impending collapse of sea turtle populations, conservationists have been ratcheting up the pressure on governments to save these animals from extinction. As Carr put it: "Protection is not a parochial problem. They cannot be saved in any one place or by controlling any one phase of the life cycle. No matter how much the nest output is increased there will be no signs of recovery if adults are still being removed from the wild."

Trade in all seven species of turtle is currently prohibited under international law. The Bahamas gave up its tortoise shell craft industry in 1986 when trade in these products was banned to save the Hawskbill from extinction. Ethical concerns have since led to the closing of many meatpacking plants around the world. And despite increased protection of nesting beaches, it was concluded that recovery to sustainable levels requires a ban on harvesting in the wild.

Most nations in the region (including Cuba) have now taken this step. Our government is presently considering a ban on the harvesting of Green and Loggerhead turtles, which can legally be taken above a certain size from August to March. The Department of Marine Resources is conducting public consultations on this, and Cabinet will make a final decision before the next open season begins in August. Interested persons can make their views known by emailing fisheries@bahamas.gov.bs.

The BNT has recommended a ban on sea turtle harvesting for years. The argument is that we should join with our neighbours to protect a shared resource. In addition, the sight of turtles being butchered, or being held waiting for the butcher, is abhorrent to many people, and this can have a negative effect on tourism while certainly doing nothing to promote ecotourism. In fact, a picture of a tourist swimming with a turtle is worth more than the price of its meat these days.

Meanwhile, there are two competing petitions being circulated on this subject. One, by the Bahamas Sea Turtle Conservation Group, in favour of an outright ban, and the other by lawyer Andrew Allen, opposing a ban. Two issues separate these protagonists - animal cruelty (turtles are often tortured for days before being butchered alive) and sustainable use (turtles can be a managed food source like cattle).

Allen sees the outrage over turtle harvesting as "cultural arrogance" and argues that Bahamian culinary traditions should not be "criminalised" by misguided conservationists: "If turtles are under pressure we should be putting our resources into farming them. Instead, the blanket response of our local intelligentsia has always been to simply impose a ban in an effort to 'correct' Bahamian culture."

The key issue here is mariculture. However, none of the facilities that have been tried since the 1960s (in Cayman, Australia or Reunion Island, for example) have been economically successful due to the high cost of raising turtles and their slow growth rates. The Cayman farm to which Mr Allen makes reference has gone bankrupt more than once and manages to survive only as a government-subsidised tourist attraction.

One marine biologist we surveyed offered qualified support for mariculture: "Could turtles be part of an agro-ecology system to provide regional cuisine and protein for local consumption? The answer is yes, but everyone has been put off eating turtles by conservationists. Is raising turtles any less distasteful or wasteful than growing cattle on Caribbean islands? Ranching and nest protection should be part of a species recovery plan for turtles. And it should include a coastal setback requirement to protect nesting beaches. Developers are just as guilty as fishermen."

But according to Bjorndal, "There has never been a successful turtle farm or ranch. The result is always the same -- a lot of money, time and effort are wasted, and turtles sacrificed. In my opinion it is a bad thing. Farms work to increase demand for turtle meat, to increase the price they receive for the meat, which in turn increases the pressure on wild stocks.

"Farms 'mitigate' their negative impact on sea turtle populations by releasing juveniles, but these are often of mixed genetic stocks and may introduce diseases into wild stocks."

And according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, "Sea turtle farms, whether for captive breeding or ranching, cannot be shown to be directly beneficial or proven to be fatally detrimental to the conservation of wild populations. What can be demonstrated is that they are very expensive, require advanced technical knowledge, and are, to date, of unproved economic viability."

From a historical population in the hundreds of millions, the over-harvesting of sea turtles  and their eggs brought these ancient animals to the brink of extinction by the mid-20th century. It has taken a massive international conservation effort over many years to halt this collapse.

It is plain from the arguments given above that a ban on the harvesting of wild turtles is not a tough call. But if Mr Allen cares to go into the turtle ranching business, we wish him well.

•Sources: Conservation Implications of Historic Sea Turtle Nesting Beach Loss by Loren McClenachan, Jeremy Jackson, Marah Newman
Ranching and Captive Breeding of Sea Turtles, CITES
Marine Turtles in the Wild, World Wildlife Fund
40 Years of Sea Turtle Conservation, Caribbean Conservation Corporation
Sea Turtle Prototype for Conservation of Migratory Vertebrates by Nicholle Collins

Comments

[Erasmus Folly]

Thank you for this. Well said. Andrew Allen raises some valid points to ponder, but only briefly. He is disingenuous in trying to present the conservationists as 'foreign' entities though - this is absolutely false. The vast majority of Bahamians, when presented with the facts of the situation, acknowledge that banning the slaughter of turtles is the right thing to do. In pandering to the uninformed and xenophobic elements of society and trying to make it an 'us' vs 'them' scenario, he neither raises awareness nor addresses the issue, choosing instead to take the typical Bahamian 'cheap' political path - us vs them.

The points he makes are overwhelmingly trumped by the stark reality of the situation. Bahamians need to take the long view and the big picture view here, and that view points clearly to banning turtle consumption for the foreseeable future.

[Patricia Josey]

I really like being a subscriber to Bahamapundit as there are some thought provoking ideas which make you aware of "stuff" going on in our islands. I knew the Hawksbill turtle was endangered but did not realize that the habitats are decreasing so rapidly. You know if humanity were more mature and conscious, I do not think we would endanger a species (God's creation) for jewellery and ornaments which we wear once in a while.

On another thought, has one of your writers thought to write about reducing the bank interest rate during these hard times so that the middle class can get some relief! Things tuff in Freeport!!

[Adrian La-Roda]

Hi Larry
This is a well written piece, as always. However as part of the group that opposes the ban i wish to catogorically state that we DO NOT support the commercial harvesting of turtles nor do we support the dispatching of turtles in public. However we totally support the continued "subsistance" fishing of green turtles only. As this compromise should address the concerns of environmentalist and the needs of humanity.