Turtle huggers, NGO’s, I’m talking to YOU.
I am hoping to gain your attention because from the message I get from the Embargo of Mexican Wild Caught Shrimp it appears that you may be able to make a difference.
Have any of you been privy to receiving an e-mail starting back in February that showed a series of images of people collecting sea turtle eggs? For those that didn’t receive this e-mail it went something like this: “look at those people in southern Mexico, collecting all those eggs from those poor defenseless sea turtles. Mexico hasn’t a clue on how to protect their own resources so why should we care about Mexico?” I am paraphrasing here.
Well the letter was sent to me in Spanish recently and I received the same recycled rumor with a similar message criticizing our own country.
I posted the last image in its true size. Get a load of the birds!
My comments to people who sent me these much forwarded threads were consistent and remain so: what about the birds? Should we chase the people off the beach so the turkey vultures can have a feeding frenzy? Are turkey vultures more important than the people? Are sea turtles more important than people?
That gets right to the point. I have eaten two sea turtle eggs in my lifetime but I wouldn’t do it again. It was on my daughters baptismal day at the party on the beach. A baptism is considered a good reason for a fiesta in Monte Alto, Guerrero where my mother in law lives. The town is located in the southern state of Guerrero on what’s known as “la Costa Chica” (the little coast), recognized for being one of the poorest areas of Mexico.
There are people who grew up collecting turtle eggs from the beach for food- my husband is one of them. So I showed him the photographs, there are about eight in the entire series. The first thing he mentioned is that the sand looked different. Also, he’d never seen that many turtles nesting in such a small area, but he remembered his older uncles describing that kind of event in the past. Then he became suspicious at how the people were all working together and said that it probably wasn’t poaching. He thought it looked like a conservation effort. And guess what? It was!
Apparently these images were taken in Costa Rica and are of volunteers collecting eggs to be hatched and later released. This was information confirmed by Dr. J. Wallace Nichols founder of Grupo Tortuguero de las Californias. I highly respect this group and know “Dr. J” from his many visits to Loreto.
Hearing Francisco’s comments of how sea turtle egg foragers protect their spots reminded me a lot of foraging for wild mushrooms along the coast of Sonoma and Humboldt counties. I competed with local Italian chefs for my Boletus edulis, and Japanese connoisseurs for the wild Tricholoma magnivelare. Yes, I had my secret spots for Pleurotus ostreatus, Tuber californicum, and Cantharellus cibarius. I wouldn’t have appreciated someone else wiping them out any more than my husband as a little boy would have given up his finds either.
In a place where there is little opportunity to make a living like along la Costa Chica, no tourism, no industry, and few opportunities for kids to go to school, one learns to live from the land or one migrates away. Harvesting sea turtle eggs and sea turtles for their meat has been a tradition for thousands of years. Just because we think sea turtles are special and cute shouldn’t give us the right to try to save them while taking away something that has always belonged to the people. We must educate and offer justifiable alternatives for them to make a decent living so they won’t need to forage for endangered sea turtle eggs (or move drugs) and so they can stay on their land. It’s the kind of story that’s been repeated in many places for many years.
We’re facing a similar story of Mexican legislators considering allowing the Dorado to be commercially fished. Opening up the Dorado to the commercial industry will only temporarily relieve some of the problems that industry is facing. This is the remedy that politicians have come up with to solve the problems of the over-worked, under-paid and heavily subsidized commercial fishing sector. But the catch is that while the commercial industry may feel a temporary stimulus from this move, the tourism sector would take an enormous hit and the resulting domino affect could cause a contraction of the entire Mexican economy.
If thousands of citizens including members and staff of NGO’s can mistakenly be outraged over some photos of sea turtle eggs, and create the enactment of an international embargo to “save the turtles”, then why can’t something be done about the Dorado issue? NGO’s and the response of the public created enough pressure on the Mexican government for them to make CONAPESCA start complying with international standards to lift the symbolic shrimp embargo. But so far nothing has been done about illegal longlining for Dorado despite the study from CIBNOR that stated for every ten Dorado caught by longliners, two sea turtles are also caught by this method.
Without making this post entirely too long I will close with the three-part series “Oro de Cortez” produced by Vince Radice of San Carlos, Sonora. The film came out in August 2009 and has been effective in getting grassroots efforts organized throughout the Baja Peninsula and in Sonora, Sinaloa, Jalisco and Guerrero. It also explains the issue of the illegal commercial Dorado industry based out of Guaymas, Sonora. Because we believe this affects our side of the Sea of Cortez, we have been working closely with Vince toward a solution that could help resolve the Dorado poaching issues.
I will describe that solution and others in my next posts. After watching the videos for the first time you will be outraged and you may shed tears but just know that we are looking at this as an enormous opportunity to make things right here in Mexico.
Next post-
The Collapse and Transformation of the Shrimp Industry: our future.
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