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SUNDOG
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Real Men Don’t Eat Turtle Eggs
Real Men Don’t Eat Turtle Eggs
To Fight Turtle Poaching, Campaigners Hit Below the Belt
By C.J. Bahnsen
In Mexico’s Magdalena Bay in Baja California, a Trans Am pulls into a village courtyard, parking behind an underground restaurant. When the trunk is
opened, it’s full of green turtles flipped on their backs, alive and kicking. Jeffrey Brown, an American photojournalist, starts taking pictures.
Alongside him is J. Wallace Nichols, biologist with the California Academy of Sciences who, in 1998, co-founded Grupo Tortuguero (“Turtle Group”) in
hopes of recovering the five endangered species of Eastern Pacific Sea Turtles—hawksbills, loggerheads, leatherbacks, olive ridleys and green
turtles—that forage and nest along Baja peninsula. The two have negotiated their way into this “speakeasy” underworld.
Swimming turtles are caught by the top edge of their shells and can weigh over 200 pounds.
© PHOTOS JEFFREY BROWN
A notorious poacher known only as “Lobo” takes the reptiles from the trunk. “He proceeded to lay the turtles out and hit each one over the head with a
two-by-four then butchered them up,” recalls Brown, who kept the camera snapping to document the continued poaching and over-consumption of sea
turtles in Mexico. After the slaughter “the old grandma” in the restaurant kitchen made turtle soup for waiting customers.
This practice remains “business as usual” in such makeshift restaurants throughout Baja, even though sea turtle hunting and consumption has been
banned since 1990.
“I don’t see too many turtles anymore,” says Alvaro Romero, a 78-year-old fisherman who has lived in Loreto all his life. He stopped fishing for
turtles long ago because he didn’t want to see them disappear. “Always kill, kill, killing of the turtles,” says Romero who nowadays gives eco-tours
of Coronado Island on his small boat, known as a panga. He says that poachers still hunt turtles at night around neighboring Carmen Island. They hunt
underwater with flashlights, using a hookah or free diving. A swimming turtle is grabbed by the top edge of its shell and forced to surface where
another poacher, waiting in a panga, pulls it aboard by its flippers. The animals can weigh over 200 pounds. The turtles are butchered for consumption
locally or trafficked north, fresh, for buyers in Ensenada and Tijuana who pay about $500 per turtle.
In Baja alone, an estimated 35,000 turtles die in the hands of poachers annually, speared, harvested with long gillnets or caught by hand. Four
species of marine turtles are already ecologically extinct.
Across the Sea of Cortez along the mainland coastline, turtle eggs are in high demand. The olive ridley population along Oaxaca’s 310-mile coastline
is one of the most productive in the world and a main source of egg poaching. In the mid 1990s, egg snatchers converged along two main beaches near
the city of Juchitán during arribada (mass turtle nestings), blatantly picking the area clean with no intervention from law enforcement. Lately,
police or soldiers guard arribada events. But poachers use bribery or raid unprotected nesting sites, selling the eggs to commercial traffickers.
“It’s making all these egg traffickers very rich,” says an ex-official for the Environmental Law Enforcement Agency (aka PROFEPA) in the Oaxaca
region, who asked for anonymity. “Because they buy something like 100 eggs off the beach for about four pesos [36 cents] then they sell you three eggs
in the marketplace for 10 pesos [90 cents]. So the profit is enormous. And there’s plenty to spread around to pay off the police and whoever else.”
Commercial traffickers use underage girls to smuggle eggs across the main highway between Oaxaca and Juchitán in buses or pickup trucks jammed with
passengers. PROFEPA inspectors regularly intercept two or three sacks of eggs in the luggage compartments of buses at police-supported checkpoints.
But the female mules, averaging 15 or 16 years old, are virtually untouchable, “trained” to cry rape or sexual abuse if the police dare take them into
custody. Most policemen want to avoid the complications of such charges.
Fisherman near Baja patrol for sea turtles.
Turtle poachers in Baja are often paid with drugs, traveling the same backroads as narco-traffickers, using walkie-talkies or bribery to negotiate
military checkpoints. In Oaxaca, taxi drivers are on-the-take as lookouts, because they have car radios and can warn smuggler trucks—carrying anywhere
between 5,000 to 100,000 eggs to commercial centers like Acapulco, Guerrero and Mexico City—about surprise checkpoints.
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.
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.
During his two decades of fieldwork, he has learned to move around Baja’s more “narco-saturated communities,” peopled by crack addicts and used by
drug dealers as safe harbors along trafficking routes. Volunteer manpower is too sparse to patrol all the turtle nesting areas 24/7, and fieldwork
remains risky. Protection from law enforcement, while improving, has been marginal. Police are either corrupt or hesitant to enforce turtle laws for
fear of run-ins with murderous drug lords who prowl land and sea.
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.
In 2006, World Cup soccer idols Jorge “El Brody” Campos and Kikin Fonseca joined WiLDCOAST’s latest “Don’t eat turtles!” campaign. And more recently,
Baja’s governor Narcisco Agúndez publicly announced he does not eat turtle. He now promotes turtle watching over turtle eating, an unprecedented move
in Mexico, where powerful people eat illegal seafood as a status symbol.
Meanwhile, “it looks like the [sea turtle] numbers are slowly coming up,” says Nichols. “And if this continues, then it’s possible to save the sea
turtles. And they can become the symbol of a success story—that a grassroots movement can in fact protect a piece of the ocean. That’s very powerful.”
CONTACTS: Grupo Tortuguero, www.grupotortuguero.org; WiLDCOAST, (619)423-8665, www.wildcoast.net.
—C.J. Bahnsen
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Paulina
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\"Well behaved women rarely make history.\" Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
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Cypress
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Dead turtle pictures? Turtle dump?
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Paulina
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We came across these turtles in Dec. of '06, at a spot that has held poached turtles in the past as well as other contraband. For some reason, no one
returned for them.
[Edited on 1-5-2007 by Paulina]
\"Well behaved women rarely make history.\" Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
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BajaBruno
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I had turtle soup in La Paz many years ago. I felt guilty about it, but it was very good. Bad Bruno! 
Christopher Bruno, Elk Grove, CA.
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SDRonni
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This makes me so angry and sick! What's wrong w/people?!!!
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David K
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Dorado are sure beautiful and taste good too... If they become rare will we feel the same compassion for their deaths or is it something about turtles
that make them cute and more easy to stop eating?
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Crusoe
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In the late 1960s between Mulege and Loreto their were half a dozen or so "Fish Camps" with two or three familys at each campo. These fisherpeople
survived alot on Tortugas. The turtle population was plentiful,and there was always an offering of turtle soup if you stoped.I would watch the
fisherman kill and prepare the meat and not think much of it. The turtles were not very well protected,studied or understood then. And by 1990 the
population had dwindled to 75% of what it was earlier. In 1995 I spoke with a Mexican bioligist who was studying turtles in Loreto and he related a
tale to me that I found really amazing.They had attached a tracking device on one, and in two years it had made its way through the Panama Canal and
up the east coast of Central america to Belieze. Not an uncommon trip for many turtles. Sort of like bird migration. WoW!!!
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David K
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The turtle research station at Bahia de los Angeles has the track maps of turtles that migrate from Baja to Japan!
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Crusoe
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Thanks David......That would really be interesting to see. It is an amazing journey they take. Wow!!
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Paulina
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| Quote: | Originally posted by David K
Dorado are sure beautiful and taste good too... If they become rare will we feel the same compassion for their deaths or is it something about turtles
that make them cute and more easy to stop eating? |
David,
Dorado aka Dolphin are fast growing, prolific and have a short life span - an average of 5 years. I think if turtles had that same characteristic then
the oceans wouldn't be seeing their decline.
I don't think you can compare the two.
Now on the other hand, Totuaba were nearly fished out, became endangered, or "rare" as you say. Hopefully with the work being done to preserve their
species they will make a come back as well.
Hopefully we won't have to worry about the Dorado for awhile.
P<*)))><
\"Well behaved women rarely make history.\" Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
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Bajalero
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That's a terrible sight Paulina . An especially wasteful one. All killed for nothing just to rot on the beach .
But David makes a good point. We attach emotionally to the cute things and sometimes stupidly , the repopulation of the California sea otter comes to
mind. What a destructive animal. I doubt dorado would garner equal protection as a sea turtle.
Caguama is exellent to eat. I don't think most mexican fisherman are bucks up enough to pass on a free meal if they happen near one. Education is the
only hope and you'll have to change a lot of ignorant beliefs.
From NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4951194
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woody with a view
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about 1986 i bought some turtle "lotion" from a mercado in barra de navidad on the mainland to combat a hellish sunburn. it was more out of
curiosity/necessity than a desire to use the product. after using it all i can say that it was very good product, but i doubt i'd ever buy it
again......cute turtles and all.
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Natalie Ann
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I visited a neighborhood farmacia in Ensenada and noticed they sold turtle oil lotion from Oaxaca. Pretty big bottle, not sure what percent turtle
oil. Each time I was there, I'd look at it and feel sad. Didn't try it; didn't speak to the pharmacist about selling it either. 
Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.
.....Oscar Wilde
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djh
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| Quote: | Originally posted by David K
Dorado are sure beautiful and taste good too... If they become rare will we feel the same compassion for their deaths or is it something about turtles
that make them cute and more easy to stop eating? |
Provocative question, David, thanks.
We should appreciate and have compassion for all living things.... including our own kind. (something that is occasionally forgotten on Nomad threads
and debates...?) We're all on the same path afterall ~ birth, life, death....
Taking one life so that another life can live is an old cycle. When the "consumer" wastes the supply, crappy things happen ~ consider our history.
However ~ unnecessary killing of anykind has bothered me since I was a little kid..... and to this day, I catch and release spiders.... (I'm not
preaching a revolution here.... just my own personal way).
Just because a creature doesn't walk upright, smoke, drink, drive a new truck, and act like the center of the universe does not mean its life is any
less than our own.
 
Its all just stuff and some numbers.
A day spent sailing isn\'t deducted from one\'s life.
Peace, Love, and Music
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Don Alley
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| Quote: | Originally posted by David K
Dorado are sure beautiful and taste good too... If they become rare will we feel the same compassion for their deaths or is it something about turtles
that make them cute and more easy to stop eating? |
There are elements of that... Another comparison is with dolphin mammals. They are harvested and eaten in Japan, as are whales. Taboo to some people.
But I believe that one important thing is conservation of animal populations. Often populations of a species can remain strong and still allow various
degrees of exploitation. Dorado, with their short life and fast growth-they can reproduce within a year of life-can withstand more harvest than a
giant black sea bass. Turtles, I don't know if their growth and reproductive rates would allow a managed harvest or not. I wonder what proportion of
turtle mortality comes from unintentional commercial bycatch, in nets and longlines, that may be the source of "abandoned" turtle carcasses.
And I would like to see more respect, in general, for animals. In Mexico, it is one thing for many people to kill anything that is good to eat. It is
another thing to see what many people do with fish that they don't care to eat-they throw them up on the shore to die. Puffers, cornet fish. Bummer.
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Skeet/Loreto
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Facts of Life.
Fishing with Alvaro Murillo Romero since 1968 we would on Occasion take a small Turtle for a Fiesta at San Nicolas.
At the Bismark 11 in La Paz it was served until about 1980.
Most of the Turtles I saw consumed were caught by the Local Family Fisherman and used at a Family gathering.
Before any American Groups came into being, the Mexican Govt. became very Tough on the taking of Turtles, even taking a Fishermans Panga if caught
with a Turtle.
In 1984 I was at San Georgio , on the Pacific Side, when I observed the Fisherman in a Frensey getting their Boats into the Water, returning several
hours later with Pangas loaded with Turtle. They butchered them and took the Meat to La Paz to the Public Market at $50 each, leaving the Shells on
the Beach{The shells were still there the following year}.
Later I was at the same location and found 3 Large Turtles tied up on the Beach, Crying their Pitifull Plea to be released. I never, never forgot that
CRY!!! I cut their Ties and sometime during the Night they disappeared.
All 300 Lbs. at least.
Maybe, just Maybe, if all the Drug Addicted Americans solved their Addiction, there would not be any need for Drug involvement in the selling of
Turtles.
Skeet/Loreto
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djh
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Skeet/Loreto
Later I was at the same location and found 3 Large Turtles tied up on the Beach, Crying their Pitifull Plea to be released. I never, never forgot that
CRY!!! I cut their Ties and sometime during the Night they disappeared.
Skeet/Loreto |
Good man, Skeet ! Sounds like my coyote story on a recent thread. You're a religeous man... I think you just gave a great example of those words
"whatever you do to the least of these.... you do to me" . . . Hope I'm not too far off on that quote ~ it has been a while.
djh
Its all just stuff and some numbers.
A day spent sailing isn\'t deducted from one\'s life.
Peace, Love, and Music
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DENNIS
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If anybody wants to see how these animals should be protected, try taking one out of the water in front of the power plant in Chula Vista.
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Bajalero
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| Quote: | Originally posted by DENNIS
If anybody wants to see how these animals should be protected, try taking one out of the water in front of the power plant in Chula Vista.
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And while they are protected , the very reason they can exist there in the first place is to be destroyed.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070314-9999-1m14p...
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