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Published in Winter 2004-2005
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Turtles, townsfolk and tourism
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By Tara FitzGerald
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© CEC/Pablo Añieli
The olive ridley (shown) is a small, hard-shelled marine turtle with an average length of 70 cm. Adults weigh approximately 45 kg.
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Mexico's beaches are world famous, but the very industry developed to welcome thousands of sun seekers to share this piece of paradise a few nights every year poses a very real challenge to marine turtles that have claimed these wild places as their nesting grounds for millennia.
Today, the tourist industry has become an integral part of a conservation program, working with local communities in Mexico's state of Guerrero, with officials stressing education and international cooperation as vital tools to stoke public interest and save these marine dwellers from dying out altogether.
"We try to connect with visiting tourists," says Juan Manuel Barnard, a biologist and consultant to the CEC, speaking from his laboratory in the tiny coastal town of Zihuatanejo. "In conjunction with various of the hotels here we have put corrals outside on the beach and we do ‘tours' at night where we often collect any eggs that have been laid and take them to the corrals for safekeeping."
Barnard's work, funded in part by the CEC, is part of a wider federal program that exists to protect turtles in Mexico and encourage their regeneration through local action and awareness campaigns. "We also give talks to the staff in the hotels about the turtles and how to protect them, so that they are able to explain this to tourists later," he explains.
Mexico, a country rich in biodiversity, is home to seven of the world's eight existing marine turtle species—most of which are endangered. Four of these—the leatherback, olive ridley, hawksbill turtle and the black turtle—live and/or nest in the waters and beaches around Ixtapa, a seaside resort, and Zihuatanejo.
Nesting season for the olive ridley—the most common in that area—runs from June until December. So far this year, Barnard says they have collected 100,000 eggs and hope to have around 150,000 by the end of the season.
Predators
Female sea turtles emerge from the sea at night to lay their eggs on the beaches were they were born, some swimming enormous distances to do so. They lay their eggs in nests dug into the beach, cover them with sand and then go back out to sea. Weeks later the baby turtles hatch, dig their way out and scramble to the sea at night. This process makes both the eggs and the hatchlings vulnerable to a variety of predators, such as dogs, rodents, cats, gulls, and sharks, as well as man.
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Volunteers maintain corrals like this one, where thousands of unhatched turtles can be protected.
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The building of hotels, shops and restaurants has encroached on the turtles' ancestral nesting grounds and hordes of sun-seekers trampled the beaches without a thought for the precious cargo that might be lurking under the sand. Artificial lighting from hotels, bars and restaurants in the beach areas can also lead to disorientation, as the turtles usually follow the reflection of the water to find their way back to the sea.
Litter is another enemy, with turtles often mistaking plastic bags for jellyfish in the sea and suffocating as a result.
Poaching, now a federal crime, has also severely reduced the turtle population, with demand for sea turtle eggs, oil, meat and shells stoking black market trade. Some people still believe the eggs to be an aphrodisiac, while the skin and shells are used to make clothing and handicrafts. Penalties were tightened a few years ago, with greatly increased fines and sentences for poachers and a maximum penalty of nine years in prison.
Despite these efforts, the poaching threat has not completely disappeared. Earlier this year, the carcasses of hundreds of sea turtles, most of them olive ridleys, were found bludgeoned and carved open by poachers in Guerrero state.
In September, Mexico's environmental enforcement agency, Profepa, said poaching was the principal threat faced by the black turtle species. But it added that efforts to combat trafficking of turtle meat and eggs in the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora and Sinaloa, were having an impact.
"We check restaurants, markets and all types of businesses where turtle meat could be sold," says Luis Fuey MacDonald, director general of marine resources for the agency.
And now hotels are helping to protect the turtles, with Barnard saying there are about 25 corrals in the area and around 18 hotels, plus some restaurants, participating in the project.
"Involving the local community and educating them is something that we see as fundamental to the project," Barnard says. "And it is something that is going really well for us."
There is also a local radio program broadcast every Wednesday during the nesting season, with updates on how the project is going and how many eggs have been collected so far, plus talks in schools and with taxi drivers, waiters and anyone else who might be interested. And, of course, there is a big turtle liberation every year on 31 December, involving tourists and the local community.
Working Together
The project in Zihuatanejo has already been running for some time, but the element of international cooperation is relatively new. Georgita Ruiz, at Mexico's Semarnat (Secretariat for the Environment and Natural Resources), is the national coordinator for conservation projects of endangered species, and she says the trinational initiative has taken conservation to another level.
Shrimp trawlers without TEDs (turtle excluder devices) can trap and drown sea turtles, and long fishing lines can also pose a risk. Although turtles can remain underwater for long periods, they still need to breathe. A trapped turtle tends to struggle, significantly reducing its oxygen supply and cutting down the time it has before it needs to reach air.
"Getting these issues on to the international level is important, and cooperation makes it easier to push them on to the international agenda of each country, it makes them more relevant," she adds. "It is also a process of educating and training the public, not just in the countryside but in the big cities as well."
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Supporting community action
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© CEC/Pablo Añieli
Young students from Canada, Mexico and the United States participate in the release of turtle hatchlings protected in Ixtapa beach-front corrals.
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Under the hot sun of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, a small resort town on Mexico's west coast, the CEC organized a public event on 22 October to acknowledge and celebrate the hard work of a dedicated community in saving sea turtles from poaching and loss of habitat.
The CEC's project was designed to strengthen the capacity of local communities where species live. With the assistance of the CEC, local biologist Juan Barnard helped raise public awareness and conducted training sessions with hotel staff, schools and local businesses, so that the community could assist in protecting turtle eggs on their beachfront.
International conservation leaders from the World Wildlife Fund, Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre and Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific attended the event, which ended with the release of hundreds of turtle hatchlings. Already this season, more than 100,000 olive ridley turtle hatchlings have been released under this program.
“We recognized a need for capacity development involving public awareness, training of key personnel in the proper protection and conservation techniques for eggs and hatchlings, and the coordination of local authorities and hotel associations,” says William Kennedy, executive director of the CEC. “We're happy to help a great cause, and I congratulate all those involved.”
The Fondo Social of the Banco Nacional de México (Banamex) was also on hand to honor this community effort. The bank provided all-terrain vehicles to assist local volunteers, also supported by Semarnat, in collecting turtle eggs and transporting them to corrals at nearby beaches, where the turtles will incubate before their release.
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