Tuesdays with Turtles – NPR morning Edition

This article brings up some interesting information about sea turtle poaching in Mexico, including the fact that sea turtle eggs are considered aphrodisiacal in certain cultures…

Real Men Don’t Eat Turtle Eggs : To Fight Turtle Poaching, Campaigners Hit Below the Belt (By C.J. Bahnsen)

But there have been recent gains. WiLDCOAST, a small conservation organization also co-founded by Nichols, has implemented a media campaign. It started in 2005, when Argentine singer and Playboy model Dorismar attracted controversial attention by appearing in television and poster PSAs, hitting Mexican men—who eat turtle eggs mistakenly believing they are aphrodisiacs—below the belt. The message above a salacious Dorismar reads: “My man doesn’t need to eat turtle eggs; because he knows they don’t make him more potent.” The bold campaign reached a global audience of 300 million and resulted in a decrease in consumption of sea turtle eggs.

Well, the unfortunate thing about aphrodisiacs is that if you believe, it works! So, I guess a Playboy model telling you that sea turtles eggs are baloney may work. They author does say there was a decrease in consumption, but presumably, it is not quite that easy to ascribe causation relationships to particular parts of a campaign!

Other highlights…

Turtle smuggling is thought to be a proving ground, a gateway into drug trafficking. Mexico is the principal transit country for 70 to 90 percent of cocaine entering the U.S., and the largest outside source of
marijuana and methamphetamine.

This, I did not know.

Grupo Tortuguero continues its David-vs.-Goliath efforts to co-opt fishermen and volunteers from Baja’s fishing communities to monitor, tag and protect sea turtles. The group has dozens of sites along the peninsula and all have drug issues, ranging from trafficking to addiction. “I’ve interacted with fishers who were not ‘poachers,’ but were poaching for money to feed their habit,” says Nichols

The article is interesting because it points out the similarities between sea turtle smuggling and drug smuggling, the use of young women, the co-opting of users to become dealers, the bribery of local officials, the organization to avoid capture, etc. Hmm…

My favorite turtle organization, the Chennai students’ sea turtle conservation network is in the process of getting a website together. It will be at http://www.sstcn.org, which is not much to look at right now!

Depressing as always, but this is a yearly headline around turtle nesting season.

1,000 Giant Turtles Wash Ashore in India, Bangladesh

It’s nesting season for the sea turtles of Bangladesh and India, but this year the beaches where the animals lay their eggs are eerily still.

Nearly a thousand dead turtles have washed ashore along the coasts of both countries in the past few weeks, conservation workers report.

About 200 dead reptiles have appeared in the past week alone along a single stretch of beach, pictured here, in the Bangladeshi tourist town of Cox’s Bazar (see Bangladesh map).

A team of scientists visiting the beach on Monday to investigate the mysterious mass deaths concluded that fishing nets were to blame.

Sea turtles swarming the shores to nest are getting entangled in poorly laid nets and drowning, the experts told Bangladesh’s Financial Express.

The survival rate of turtle hatchlings is estimated at anywhere between 0.1 and 1%. Assuming 0.5%, this represents 20000 hatchlings. Assuming a hatching success (not all eggs hatch successfully) of about 2/3rds, that is 30,000 eggs, or between 200-250 nests. In my two years of turtle conservation work on an approximately 3 mile stretch of beach, we relocated about a 100 nests. These aren’t the same turtles (they tend to come back to nest very close to where they hatched), but there’s my two seasons of work down the drain and then some!

Turtle safe fishing is a well researched technology and is not expensive. As I have mentioned before in a similar context, the gaps between the availability of a certain technology and its actual adoption and use are depressingly huge.

When it comes to serious problems like global warming, all the talk is going to be about the cool science and innovative solutions, but how the technology transfers to India and China, how it is implemented, and the nature of the interactions between the traditional powers and the emerging ones is going to be more critical than the science. Something to remember as a scientist!

Personal Note
I swear, this blog has gone to pot. Either I’ve been too busy at work (yes, that does not explain everything), or I have not been thinking enough. I started this blog so that when I saw something interesting, I would have to think a little bit, and gather some information to write about what I saw/read. Apparently, I don’t read/see any more (which is not true), I don’t think any more (possible), or I am too lazy to spend enough time thinking to throw a coherent blog post together.

This has got to stop, and it stops right now!!
End Personal Note
Back to the topic on hand…

The Pacific Leatherback is in serious trouble and is slated to go extinct soon.

ENN News Network

Experts at the Bellagio Sea Turtle Conservation Initiative have just concluded a conference to save the imperiled Pacific leatherback sea turtle from extinction. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) has classified Pacific leatherbacks as critically endangered.

The meeting convened an internationally diverse group of scientists, conservationists, economists, fund-raisers and policy makers. One focus was the development of immediate actions to boost hatchling production of the Western Pacific nesting populations by protecting nests from predation, beach erosion and human consumption on the beaches of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Vietnam and Malaysia. Although there are still hundreds of turtles nesting, with 75 percent in one area on the north coast of Papua (Indonesia), researchers are concerned by new information indicating that the majority of nests laid are not producing hatchlings. Some simple procedures have been developed to improve hatch success, and applying these techniques now may ensure the populations are sustained in the future.

Some radical measures have been suggested, including cloning. Well, highly unlikely. Jurassic Park horrors and ethical dilemmas aside, cloning reptiles ain’t so easy.

What ails the Pacific Leatherback? Their numbers have dropped from 115000 reproductive females to less than 3000. This news release from a 2004 conference has more. But the usual suspects are destruction of nesting habitats, long line fishing, egg poaching, and to a more uncertain degree, climate change.

It’s depressing, I’ve never seen a leatherback, I guess I need to get on the case and see one before they disappear for ever.

Following up on the fishing issues from last week, here’s word that lights used to lure tuna towards longline fisheries attract juvenile sea turtles as well.

Article – Science & Technology – Lightsticks may hold deadly attraction for sea turtles

RALEIGH, N.C. Longline fishermen use lightsticks similar to the glowing tubes that delight trick-or-treaters to lure tuna and swordfish to baited hooks. New research by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill scientists suggests that for endangered sea turtles the lights may hold a fatal attraction.

Lab experiments by Ken Lohmann, a University of North Carolina biology professor and John Wang, a graduate who is now a research associate at the University of Hawaii and National Marine Fisheries, found that young loggerhead turtles in a tank tended to swim toward lights.

It’s well known that hatchling turtles on a beach will crawl toward lights as they try to find the surf. But researchers did not know whether juvenile loggerheads in the water shared that attraction. Young loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles, which are protected because of declining numbers, are inadvertently hooked during longline fishing.

Well, not so surprising, is it? Bioluminescence is a common enough phenomenon that especially at night, animals will be attracted to light as it can signal food. It’s tricky, but when you try to catch fish, tyou will catch other animals as well. So, when you change something about the way you catch fish, you need to study how it affects other endangered species…

Off topic, but it is ironic that I read this in the ocregister, which is a newspaper from Orange County, California. It reported on work done by UNC Chapel Hill, which is in Orange County, North Carolina.