Turtles killed for flippers

Recently, Panama’s Marine Resources Authority (ARAP) seized a fisherman in possesion of turtle flippers in Coquira port in Chepo. The rest of the body of the turtle was nowhere to be found.

For artisanal fishermen, turtles represent big profits through the sale of their flippers, shells and meat.

Flippers are in high demand on the open market where they are usually destined for human consumption.

But turtles are already threatened by natural predators, climate change, environmental degradation, unregulated tourism and the collection of their eggs.

Now, the increase in hunting is threatening their very existence.

ARAP has recently started working with Conservacion Internacional and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute on a project entitled “Actions for Conserving Marine Turtles on Key Beaches in the Pacific”.

This project includes research, a public educational campaign and re-equipping the Marine Station in Los Santos.

Five of the seven species of marine turtle still exist in Panama, including the carey turtle which is on the endangered species list.

Turtles have been in existence for 150 million years. They contribute to the productivity, stability and health of the marine ecosystem by feeding on the abundant organisms to be found in shallow areas and then excreting the carbon residue into deeper marine water.

Pacifists by nature, turtles make easy targets and are rarely defensive. The best way to help protect them is to denounce all sales of turtle products, report illegal fishing, prevent pollution in rivers and the sea, and by not consuming any product that contains turtle meat.

Mystical Big Turtle

Meet Big Turtle. Please view this in large size (and surely you will not sleep tonight). This guy was waiting for us in our driveway on Sunday. I think this is a giant snapping turtle, but I invite others' ideas on what type turtle this is. Hir shell was a weathered olive green color. He looked prehistoric.

My guess is he weighed 30-35 pounds. Mind you, our backyard is an ancient woodlands forest so we see all kinds of wildlife near our home. Big Turtle was not at all frightened by us, and he allowed me to take several pictures of him, including some full body shots. He appeared to us on the very first day of summer. In many cultures throughout history, animals were thought to possess special powers as sources of healing, insight, and transformation. Here is what one source on the Web had to say about the spiritual symbolism of turtles.

"Turtles have been and are held sacred in many traditions. In the Far East the turtle shell is seen as a symbol of heaven while the squarer underside is symbolic of mother earth. And through other traditions such as Native American turtle is a symbol of mother earth and our ability to find happiness on mother earth. The turtle is a slow moving creature on land and is never in a rush.

All you need to do is find the pace that is appropriate. Like the knight of pentacles in a Tarot deck turtle energy is steady, earthy and always accomplishes what they set out to do. If you align with the energy of turtle you are assured completion. It teaches to go with the flow and be happy with the pace that your life is taking. Do not try to push it faster than is natural or you may reach your destination too early and feel you missed something along the way. Turtle teaches to try and enjoy the journey as much as the final achievement.

To focus too much on the end of something means you will often find yourself dreaming of the future, which will leave you ungrounded and unhappy. So have around you the symbol of turtle when you wish to remain grounded and take joy in what you have been given. Also because of their great shells turtle symbolize our ability to protect ourselves. When you have done a certain amount of personal development and thinking you come to realise that everything is connected. And we start to see ourselves reflected in the actions of others.

But sometimes some people have their own history and their own anger and it is just best to get out of their way. That is where the shell of turtle may come in handy. You don’t have to take responsibility on for everyone. Sometimes just leave them to get on with it. And if they get too close use turtle energy to give them a little snap so they know you are there."

Albino Baby Turtle Swims With His Friends

Nature offers a beautiful contrast. A baby albino turtle swims will his fellow green sea turtles in a pond at Khram island in Thailand. Reuters says the hawksbill baby turtles hatch and are kept at the navy's conservation center each year.

They are kept here until the turtles' shells are strong enough to protect them from predators. When they are about six-months-old they are released to the sea.

New net timer could save sea turtles from drowning

Fishery managers trying to protect rare sea turtles from dying in fishing nets have tapped a Cape Cod company to build a device they think can help balance turtle protection with profitable fishing.

That time is crucial if a turtle gets snared in the nets dragged behind fishing trawlers. Federal research indicates the vast majority of sea turtles survive entanglement but only if the net is pulled up in less than 50 minutes.

The “tow-time logger” is a 7-inch, silver cylinder that attaches to fishing nets and records how long the net stays underwater.

“Turtles have also been around since the time of the dinosaurs,” said Elizabeth Griffin of the environmental group, Oceana. “They’re cool animals that I think most people want to see continue to exist.”

With the logger, regulators can avoid other, potentially more onerous, restrictions on perpetually struggling fishermen such as shutting down fishing areas or requiring turtle-saving gear that doesn’t work well in all nets. In fisheries where they decide time limits would work best, they wouldn’t have to depend on an honor system to make sure nets are pulled up in time.

The device’s early tests at sea have been successful, and work is ongoing to toughen it for the real-life rigors, such as being banged on fishing boat decks. The company expects it to cost between $600 and $800, an expense that would fall to fishermen.

The logger was built under a $25,000 federal contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by Onset Computer Corp., a Bourne-based supplier of data loggers for energy and environmental monitoring. It starts recording water depth every 30 seconds once the net drops below two meters. If the net stays under beyond a preset time limit, the logger records it, and the infraction can be discovered when regulators download its data.

Some environmentalists say turtles shouldn’t be kept underwater at all because even relatively short times of being trapped underwater without oxygen hurt them.

Even when the logger is perfected, regulators know limiting how long the nets stay underwater is no cure-all as they devise rules, which they hope to propose for public comment by 2010, to meet a new federal requirement to protect sea turtles from trawler fishing nets.

The data logger at least makes briefer tow times a feasible way to protect turtles, if researchers can sort out what’s safe, she said.

Griffin says there’s also not enough data on how trapped turtles fare in colder waters, so no one really knows how long they can be kept under and survive.

“It’s a bad idea,” said James Fletcher, a veteran fisherman and now head of the North Carolina-based United National Fisherman’s Association.

Fishermen are skeptical. They say short tows aren’t practical in most fisheries, such as those in deeper waters, where a worthwhile catch is impossible if the nets must constantly be pulled up.

“The idea is that we’re looking at providing options to the managers in the future,” Milliken said.

“Nobody’s going to love the idea,” acknowledged Henry Milliken, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is part of NOAA. But he added fishermen might prefer limits on how long the net can be underwater to harsher alternatives, such as closing fishing areas.

The turtle most frequently caught in trawl nets in the Atlantic is the loggerhead, the threatened 250-pound giants named for their relatively large heads. In U.S. waters, every sea turtle is listed as either endangered or threatened, so any turtle deaths in fishing nets hit the populations hard.

As the NMFS tries to determine which steps will or won’t work, it’s held public meetings this spring from New York to Georgia.

The excluder devices have had success in some fisheries, including the Southeast’s shrimp trawl fishery, but bigger species, such as horseshoe crab, monkfish and flounder, can bounce out along with the turtles and make the nets far too inefficient.

The most common way to protect turtles right now is the Turtle Excluder Device, often a circular, barred frame attached near the front of fishing nets. The bars are big enough for fish and other sea life to slip through, but too narrow for turtles, which bounce out of the net before they get caught.

But with regulations coming, DiDomenico said his best hope is that regulators don’t broadly force a turtle-protecting solution, including the time logger being developed, on a diverse fleet.

Greg DiDomenico of the Garden State Seafood Association, a New Jersey trade group, said since the new rules will apply to fisheries from Cape Cod to Florida where the turtles swim whatever shakes out is bound to be felt industry-wide. That includes “huge negative impacts on some fisheries,” he said.

“It’s not one-size-fits-all,” he said.

Sea Turtle Conservation by Royal Thai Navy

The Royal Thai Navy is doing a commendable job by protecting sea turtles at their Sea Turtle Conservation Center.

Some interesting features of sea turtles and Sea Turtle Conservation Center are:

• Sea Turtles
  • Khram Island is the nesting site for green sea turtles, where hundreds of sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs
  • Sea turtles in Thailand are being killed by humans for their meat, eggs and their shells which are considered precious
  • Also large number of sea turtles die by getting trapped in fishing nets during migration
  • To save the sea turtles, the Royal Thai Navy has Sea Turtle Conservation Center
• Sea Turtle Conservation Center
  • A research institute of Thai Navy at Sattahip with turtle breeding farms and nursery ponds
  • The eggs of sea turtles are identified by observing the softness of the sand and the eggs are then moved closer to the beach side for further nurturing
  • Eggs are kept inside sixty centimetre deep sand pits for hatching after noting down the number of eggs, the date of nesting and the expected birth date
  • After birth, the new born turtles are taken to tanks for a wash to remove the sand and then are provided with anti-fungus treatment to keep them healthy
  • For almost six months, the baby turtles are looked after and grown up turtles are then released into the sea
  • The center also provides valuable information on sea turtles through lectures, video presentation and exhibitions
  • The center is also opened to visitors

Rare turtle travels 7,000 km to breed!

A rare leatherback turtle, which has existed since the time of the dinosaurs, has been found to be adept at making the longest ocean journey to breed in warmer places.

Fitted with a satellite transmitter by Canadian scientists to track its journey, the turtle - which is the also world’s largest turtle growing up to two metres long and weighing up to 500 kilogramme - travelled over 7,000 km to be found on the coast of Colombia in South America.

The 149-centimetre-long turtle named Nueva Esperanza kept sailing for over a year to reach the coast of Colombia, the Canadian Press quoted researchers at the Canadian Sea Turtle Network in Halifax.

The researchers said their counterparts in Colombia tracked the device and found the turtle after the lengthy journey to be nesting on a beach. The turtle makes the ocean journey to breed in the warm beaches of the Caribbean and South America.

The researchers said the data from the transmitter on the turtle will help them study the journey pattern of the species and take steps to preserve them.

After exisiting for hundreds of millions of years, it is now an endangered species in Canada.

Turtle Tunnel

Florida is receiving 13 billion federal stimulus dollars to build roads, feed seniors, and save jobs. But 3.4 million of Florida’s cut is going to build a tunnel to help turtles cross a busy highway. The turtle tunnel has some taxpayers outraged.

US Highway 27 near Tallahassee is said to be the deadliest road in the world, that is for turtles. The highway divides two lakes. The turtles use one for nesting.

Dr. Matt Aresco is an environmentalist.

“Most of the road kills I find out here, they are not even pass this white line.”

Dr. Matt Aresco has been on a 10 year mission to help the turtles cross the road. His hard work will pay off this September, when 3.4 million federal stimulus dollars will be spent to build a tunnel under the highway.

“Even if you are not in favor of wildlife conservation, which a major part of this project is, would you want to hit a 400 lbs alligator with your car at night or have a turtle the size of a cinder block come through your windshield.”

The project has its critics. Pace Allen, a member of several anti-tax groups says the turtle tunnel is a waste of money.

“It’s outrageous, unbelievable, but I think there is a real opportunity for people to standup and say look at this example our governments, federal, state and local are totally out of control.”

“The turtle tunnel is just one of more than 520 road and bridge projects the state plans to spend build with stimulus dollars.”

Leon County Commissioner Cliff Thaell says the project will create jobs.

“We have a lot of people hungry for work and ready to earn a living. This job is going to put people back to work and put food on their table.”

And the dish won’t be turtle soup.

The Turtle tunnel made the list of 100 questionable spending projects released by Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. The list was sent submitted to the presidents’ office, which responded by calling the report “flawed.”