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Several employees of the Seaquarium (USA), which cares for injured sea turtles, consumed meat from an endangered leatherback turtle after it died from injuries suffered in a boat collision. The meal has led to disciplinary action by the Seaquarium and an investigation by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The leatherback was brought in suffering from severe injuries. It died that day. After an examination to determine the cause of death, an employee asked the veterinarian whether he could take some of the meat home. The employee is from Trinidad and Tobago, a Caribbean nation in which the consumption of turtle meat is common, according to a written statement issued by the Seaquarium. The veterinarian said it was all right to take some meat and the animal care supervisor, agreed, according to the state’s investigative report. The next day, the employee brought in turtle stew. Several employees ate it at lunch. State wildlife officials investigated the incident but filed no charges, issuing only a warning to the Seaquarium’s curator. The Seaquarium holds a state permit to handle endangered sea turtles, and the permit was simply too vague about what should be done with dead ones, say sources at the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Division of Law Enforcement. Source: Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, 6 February 2001.

State environmental regulators have accused the Army Corps of Engineers of violating its own rules on a project meant to protect nesting sea turtles. The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and the Division of Land Resources have issued notices of violation, charging that contractors hired by the agency illegally dumped sediment into the waters near Oak Island and built a causeway on the Intracoastal Waterway without getting permits. The corps plans to create dunes on a 1.7-mile stretch of beachfront on the island. The $ 11 million project is intended to create a safe haven for nesting sea turtles. Complaints by local residents led inspectors to the banks, where they discovered that the corps’ contractor had built the earthen causeway to aid them in moving heavy equipment off a barge. During the construction of the causeway, the contractor dumped a “significant amount” of soil into the water. The state agencies ordered the contractor to remove the causeway and restore the area, stopping all other work until the restoration is complete. Source: Wilmington Morning Star, 8 February 2001.

Biologists from the Florida Department of Transportation think they have a solution to help hatchling turtles reach the sea. By mid-March a three-quarter mile stretch of road will be lit by saucer-size dome lights. Embedded in the road, they would be invisible to tiny turtles looking for the ocean. The lights, about the circumference of a grapefruit, will be glued into the yellow median line. Vegetation will help keep any of the domes’ light from reaching the beach. Boca Raton is the first area to try the lighting system. Broadwell said the planned mid-March installation assures the lights will be ready when this year’s turtles start to hatch. For two nesting seasons, the results of the $500,000 experiment will be carefully monitored. Source: Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, February 2001.

A homeless man who admitted to poaching more than 200 turtle eggs from a Palm Beach County beach was sentenced to a year in jail and fined $22,300. State marine patrol agents arrested Carter after they say they caught him with a bag containing 223 sea turtle eggs. Carter pleaded guilty to molesting marine turtle eggs, a third-degree felony, and to three misdemeanors: possession of marine turtle eggs, unlawful entry to state property and possession of drug paraphernalia. The fine amounted to $100 for every egg he stole. Carter had been arrested twice before for the same offense and spent six months in jail after pleading guilty to federal charges. Source: Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, March 2001.

In what could be the final, costly chapter in the 6-year-old sea turtle lawsuit, Volusia County has been ordered to pay more than $286,000 in legal fees to the New Smyrna Beach women who filed the suit. US District Judge Anne C. Conway ordered county officials to shoulder the legal expenses for Rita Alexander and Shirley Reynolds because their lawsuit had prompted the county to improve conditions for the endangered sea turtles. Reynolds and Alexander filed the lawsuit six years ago, seeking to remove cars and to dim lights along the county’s beaches to safeguard sea turtles, which are protected by the federal Endangered Species Act. Since then, Volusia has banned cars from long stretches of beach and adopted stricter standards for the lights. The county also has hired two code-enforcement officers to crack down on homeowners and businesses that violate the lighting ordinance. A year ago, the judge dismissed the lawsuit for a second time, saying Volusia County was doing all it could. However, Conway wrote in her recent order that Volusia should pay the legal fees because it wouldn’t have approved the turtle protections if not for the lawsuit. Source: Orlando Sentinel, 27 March 2001.

The ban on longline fishing that has kept the entire Hawaii fleet tied up at the docks for two weeks has been partially lifted after an agreement was hammered out. Under the terms of the judge’s new order, Hawaii longline vessels targeting tuna to operate in the Pacific except during April and May in 1.9 million square miles of ocean. The terms of the order prohibit longline fishing by Hawaii vessels targeting swordfish year-round in all waters from the equator to the north pole. The new rules are intended to reduce the unintentional hookup and entanglement of loggerhead turtles by the Hawaii fleet by 100 percent, leatherback turtle takes by 82 to 85 percent, olive ridley turtle takes by 52 to 69 percent and green turtle takes by 89 to 91 percent. Many in the industry believe the new rules will do little to prevent foreign fishing fleets operating in the area from harming the turtles. Source: WorldCatch News, 2 April 2001.

Nearly 40 sea turtles have entered an intake canal at Florida Power’s (Crystal River, FL) nuclear facility in the past month, baffling plant officials and causing alarm among a watchdog organization. All but two of the 38 turtles survived and were put back in the gulf. One was apparently dead before entering the canal and another died inside. The turtles, mostly Kemp’s ridleys, were presumably in search of food. Warm water discharged by the plant attracts a variety of aquatic life. Most of the turtles were between 3 and 4 years old, measured about 10 inches and weighed about 10 pounds. Because the number of live “takes” in one month approaches the federal two-year limit of 50, Florida Power plans to lobby the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an expanded threshold. Currently, the plant faces a two-year federal limit of three fatalities. Source: St. Petersburg Times, 4 April 2001.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has extended its requirement that fishermen deploying longlines on the water’s surface carry the simple tools needed to release entangled sea turtles with minimal harm. A temporary requirement for these devices - a dipnet and a line clipper - has been in effect since October 2000. The dipnet is a mesh net used to bring a small sized sea turtle on the vessel in order to untangle the gear. The dipnet handle must be greater than six feet in length and be made of a material that can support a minimum of 100 pounds without breaking or bending. It must also have a net hoop of at least 31 inches inside diameter and a bag depth of at least 38 inches. The mesh may be no more than three inches by three inches. The line clipper is used for large sea turtles that cannot be brought aboard. It is a pole at least six feet in length topped with a protected cutting blade to prevent accidental contact with a sea turtle. The blade must be fastened to the handle and capable of cutting the fishing gear deployed by that vessel. Source: Environment News Service, 5 April 2001.

Owners of boats, surfboards and lawn chairs are going to have to start working a little harder if they hope to comply with a revised sea turtle protection ordinance adopted by the Bonita Springs City Council. For years, some residents have apparently felt that the city is safe enough for them to leave their beach toys and equipment overnight near the sand dunes. But in 30 days they will have to drag toys, cabanas, personal watercraft and the like beyond the dune line at the end of the day so those items don’t become hazards for sea turtles in nesting season. The revised ordinance, adopted on a 5-0 vote, also clarifies some of the lighting restrictions, allows disabled beachgoers to use specially equipped wheelchairs and prohibits the use of mechanical beach cleaning machines unless permitted by the state Department of Environmental Protection. Council members further agreed to a minor language change in the ordinance requiring county staff to consider public safety when reviewing lighting restrictions. The ordinance is almost identical to ones adopted by Sanibel Island in 1997 and Fort Myers Beach in 2000. Source: Naples Daily News, 5 April 2001.

A high-profile helicopter raid last year of Everglades City fish houses and packing plants has largely evaporated, with most of the charges dismissed against 13 locals who had been accused of violating wildlife, marine and drug laws. The pre-dawn roundup, dubbed “Operation Alliance,” led to dozens of mostly misdemeanor charges of selling and possessing snook, jewfish, stone crabs, gag grouper, alligators, loggerhead sea turtles and other protected species. Four men had their charges eliminated entirely; most of the others face reduced charges following the two-year investigation.

Maj. Michael Wiwi, a bureau chief with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Division of Law Enforcement, blamed a legal technicality for the less-than-successful bust. But defense attorney Donald Day, who represented a majority of the men charged in the sting, said the officers who arrested his clients should voice their complaints to state lawmakers instead. Each case had different circumstances, said Day, who filed various motions to either have evidence suppressed or charges dismissed due to a lack of evidence. Source: Naples Daily News, 14 April 2001.

Sea turtles were declared endangered in the United States in 1973, and eating them has been illegal in Mexico for a decade. But along the coast of the Baja peninsula in western Mexico, the turtle is the equivalent of the holiday ham and it is eaten in most households at least a few times a year. Last week the poachers—small-time fishermen hunting for their families, as well as organized smugglers who send turtle meat as far north as Los Angeles—were thought to be out in full force preparing for Easter, the biggest turtle-eating holiday of the year.

Although consumption has decimated the population, rumors of a coming crackdown on poachers and a growing conservation movement led by US scientists have made residents more cautious about their culinary habit. People in Baja have been barbecuing sea turtles for centuries. Along the Baja coast, a dead turtle is still valued more than a live one. And prohibition has turned the turtle into a romantic symbol in the popular lore, the food of drug traffickers and powerful politicians.

With demand high and supply diminishing, turtle poaching is more profitable than ever. Source: Newsweek, 23 April 2001.

Remember all those protesters dressed up as sea turtles and carrying pictures of dolphins as they railed against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999? Well, the W.T.O.-bashers are back, this time in Quebec, where President George W. Bush and 33 other heads of state are gathered to reaffirm a 2005 deadline for creating a free-trade zone stretching from Canada to Argentina.

But a close look at recent rulings by the trade organization suggests that the demonstrators’ wrath may be misdirected: in fact, the free-trade group may be turning green. Surprisingly, the W.T.O. affirmed the right of countries to impose trade sanctions to protect the environment. What it objected to were essentially administrative details. The trade organization ruled against efforts by the United States to block imports of shrimp caught with nets that sweep up endangered sea turtles. Again, the decision found no fault with American statutes, finding that the 1995 accord even authorizes trade sanctions when, as in this case, the environmental harm takes place in foreign waters. But the appeals panel ruled against the United States because it found that Washington had unfairly discriminated against foreign suppliers and provided them inadequate legal safeguards. The appeals panel successfully called on the United States to make modest administrative fixes.

Yet many environmentalists remain firmly opposed to the trade organization. Todd Steiner, director of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, said: “Every time the environment and trade come into conflict, the environment loses. More insidious, with the W.T.O. rules looming in the background, lawmakers shrink from passing strict environmental protections. Today it is the shy, gentle sea turtles, tomorrow it will be our forests, our right to protect children and prisoners from forced labor, and our very democracy.”
Source: The New York Times, 22 April 2001.

Carcasses of over 3,500 olive ridley sea turtles have been found strewn on Orissa’s (eastern India) Gahirmatha beach in Kendrapara district, Wildlife Department sources said. The creatures, recently congregating on the beach for mass nesting, were believed to have been killed by fishing trawlers intruding into the area notified as a marine sanctuary. The carcasses were found on a 2.7-km stretch of the beach on Nasi-1 island, the sources said. Nearly 600,000 turtles arrived for annual mass nesting on Gahirmatha beach, the world’s biggest rookery for olive ridleys. Anup Nayak, divisional forest officer, Rajnagar Wildlife and Mangrove Division, maintained that the mortality rate for breeding turtles had come down considerably compared to that of last year. Nayak said the toll was less this year because of joint patrolling done by the Forest Department and Coast Guard. The figure was a staggering 10,000+ last year. Source: PTI via the BBC, 21 February 2001.

The Turtle Nest’s Adoption Program, the latest initiative at WWF Wallacea Bioregion was officially launched in the first week of May this year in a fund-raising event called the Turtle’s Night. The scheme of the program is actually quite simple. An individual, or an institution, will be given the honor of being an adopted parent of one turtle nest in the WWF’s turtle conservation pilot project at Perancak Beach, Jembrana Regency, some 98 kilometers west of Denpasar. The money will be used to finance a group of security guards who will patrol the beach on a nightly basis to prevent the poaching of turtle’s eggs. Some of the collected funds will also go toward a treatment program for newly born hatchlings, and the development of vital infrastructure at the hatchery. Source: The Jakarta Post, 12 April 2001.

Malaysian sea turtle conservationists are appealing to an Indonesian court to mete out a deterrent sentence on a Balinese who has been charged with the hunting and trading of turtles. A group calling itself the Friends of Sea Turtle said the outcome of the prosecution on the rogue trader would have a significant impact on regional turtle conservation effort. Within a week, 200 signatures had been gathered through the Internet in support of the petition to halt the killing of green turtles in Bali. Indonesia passed a law in 1999 against poaching turtles and set a quota of 4,000 per year for Balinese ceremonial needs. The petition said Indonesian turtle hunters were now compelled to hunt for the turtles in the Sulawesi Sea as the population in the Balinese waters had been wiped out. Source: The Star (Malaysia), 30 April 2001.

On the 6th March 2001, the eve of a 9-day national holiday with all official offices closed, the staff at the Kazanli Soda-Chrome Factory in southern Turkey bulldozed the containing wall of an effluent collecting basin thus releasing its entire contents directly into the sea. The entire sea area turned red, wiping out marine life including local fish stocks. Kazanli’s beaches host one of only three surviving nesting populations in Turkey of the critically endangered Mediterranean green turtle. It is feared that the chemicals discharged into the sea contain chromium and chromates, highly toxic substances. Source: MEDASSET press release, 20 March 2001.

A letter and photographs received from Lebanon by MEDASSET (The Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles) revealed that critically endangered Mediterranean green turtles nest on a beach in Lebanon. MEDASSET immediately contacted the UN Environment Programme/Mediterranean Action Plan office in Athens, the Regional Activity Centre/Specially Protected Areas/UNEP/MAP office in Tunisia and the Lebanese Ministry of the Environment. In collaboration with RAC/SPA and the Lebanese government an assessment and evaluation project for potential sea turtle nesting beaches along the coast of Lebanon is planned for the summer 2001. Source: MEDASSET press release, 6 April 2001.