bajajudy
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Article from El Univeral on turtles
Sea turtle meat still considered a delicacy
One of Antonio D?az's favorite $ meals isn't on the menu at any $ restaurant in his hometown of $ Acapulco: sea turtle meat
Wire services
September 21, 2005
One of Antonio D?az's favorite meals isn't on the menu at any restaurant in his hometown of Acapulco: sea turtle meat.
"It has lots of vitamins," said D?az, 42.
Fifteen years after the country banned killing turtles, many people such as D?az keep eating them because of the perception they enhance male
virility.
In the past five years, Mexico has doubled the number of police and troops working to save turtles in an effort to better protect the animals and
their eggs on the nation's beaches. This month, as the egglaying season reaches its height, conservation groups are intensifying efforts to save the
turtles.
"The consumption of eggs is increasing," said Aida Navarro, 30, conservation manager for Wildcoast, a San Diego, Californiabased environmental
protection organization. "If sea turtles aren't allowed to reproduce, there is no way they can recover."
About 150 inspectors, accompanied by about 1,000 Navy troops, patrol the 28 most important of 200 beaches where sea turtles nest during the height of
the egg-laying season, said Lu?s Fueyo MacDonald, 51, the nation's senior environmental lawenforcement official for marine life in Mexico City.
BEACH GUARDS
Agripino Cort?s Moreno, who commands the 14 environmental officers working with M?nica Vallarino, the head of the nearby Hermosa Beach Turtle Camp,
said it's impossible to protect Mexico's more than 9,000 kilometers (5,421 miles) of coastline.
"You can see the problem," he said, pointing along the beach that stretches into the distance. "We can't patrol most of it."
The focus of government antipoaching efforts has changed since 2000. Before, more emphasis was placed on attempting to prevent their sale in markets
and alongside highways.
On a beach just south of Acapulco, Vallarino accompanies a group of environmental police armed with assault rifles. A call on her cell-phone alerts
her to the arrival of nesting Olive Ridley turtles about a kilometer away.
Vallarino and police race along the beach to where the turtles have emerged from the sea. An officer or volunteer stands guard by each turtle while
she lays as many as 100 golf ball-sized eggs and then escorts her as she drags herself back to the ocean.
"Poachers are everywhere in this area," said Vallarino, 40. "Without a guard they will take them away." Volunteers carry the eggs to the Hermosa Beach
camp, where they take about 50 days to incubate. The hatchlings are then released into the ocean.
To avoid patrols, some poachers catch female turtles at sea, slice them open to remove their eggs and then dump the bodies into the ocean. On a single
day last month, 80 such carcasses washed up on a beach in the southern state of Oaxaca.
In a country where the minimum wage is just more than 45 pesos a day, the incentive is clear. An egg sells for as much as 60 pesos (US5.55) on the
black market, meaning a single nest can yield 6,000 pesos.
Juan Carlos Cant?, director of Defenders of Wildlife's Mexican branch, said poverty alone doesn't explain the egg trade. In coastal areas, people
sometimes collect eggs to buy alcohol and clothes.
"We've found that egg stealing increases on weekends and before festivals it isn't a question of needing resources to survive," Cant? said.
All five species of marine turtles that inhabit Mexico's waters are listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union, based in Gland, Switzerland.
Three are considered "critically endangered," meaning they face an extremely high risk of extinction. The leatherback, which can weigh as much as 500
kilograms (1,100 pounds) and measure up to 1.8 meters (6 feet) in length, is the most threatened.
Until the 1980s, Mexico was the leatherbacks' most important breeding ground, Cant? said. Since then, the number of females nesting in Mexico each
year has fallen to less than 10 from 880.
To help curb the illegal trade, groups such as Defenders, Greenpeace and Wildcoast have begun campaigns to convince Mexican men that eating turtle
eggs does nothing for their virility.
One Defenders' poster shows a man with turtle egg dripping from his mouth along with the caption: "You drank the lie turtle eggs are not
aphrodisiacs."
Wildcoast's posters of sparsely clothed models above a caption that reads, "my man doesn't need turtle eggs" provoked objections from the National
Women's Institute, which complained that it was demeaning to women.
Wildcoast said the billboard is effective because it attracts attention.
"In the end, we came up with the idea of using a good- looking woman saying that, 'if you are consuming sea turtle eggs you are letting me know that
you are not man enough,' " Navarro said.
The campaigns have done little to persuade D?az to drop the habits of a lifetime. Turtle eggs make men more potent, and he recently ate some, courtesy
of his brother-in-law who works near the beach, D?az said.
"Thirty years ago my grandmother took me to the market to drink turtle blood," D?az said. "It's just like any other kind of seafood."
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ursidae69
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Registered: 2-22-2004
Location: Youngsville, NM
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Thanks for posting, hope the campaign works and stops some folks from eating them.
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