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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2005 
Sea Turtle Meat Still Considered a Delicacy
 Wire services
| | "My man doesn't need turtle eggs... because he knows they don't make him more potent." |
One of Antonio Díaz's favorite meals isn't on the menu at any restaurant in his hometown of Acapulco: sea turtle meat.
"It has lots of vitamins," said Díaz, 42.
Fifteen years after the country banned killing turtles, many people such as Díaz keep eating them because of the perception they enhance male virility.
In the past five years, Mexico has doubled the number of police and troops working to save turtles in an effort to better protect the animals and their eggs on the nation's beaches. This month, as the egglaying season reaches its height, conservation groups are intensifying efforts to save the turtles.
"The consumption of eggs is increasing," said Aida Navarro, 30, conservation manager for Wildcoast, a San Diego, Californiabased environmental protection organization. "If sea turtles aren't allowed to reproduce, there is no way they can recover."
About 150 inspectors, accompanied by about 1,000 Navy troops, patrol the 28 most important of 200 beaches where sea turtles nest during the height of the egg-laying season, said Luís Fueyo MacDonald, 51, the nation's senior environmental lawenforcement official for marine life in Mexico City.
Beach Guards
Agripino Cortés Moreno, who commands the 14 environmental officers working with Mónica Vallarino, the head of the nearby Hermosa Beach Turtle Camp, said it's impossible to protect Mexico's more than 9,000 kilometers (5,421 miles) of coastline.
"You can see the problem," he said, pointing along the beach that stretches into the distance. "We can't patrol most of it."
The focus of government antipoaching efforts has changed since 2000. Before, more emphasis was placed on attempting to prevent their sale in markets and alongside highways.
On a beach just south of Acapulco, Vallarino accompanies a group of environmental police armed with assault rifles. A call on her cell-phone alerts her to the arrival of nesting Olive Ridley turtles about a kilometer away.
Vallarino and police race along the beach to where the turtles have emerged from the sea. An officer or volunteer stands guard by each turtle while she lays as many as 100 golf ball-sized eggs and then escorts her as she drags herself back to the ocean.
"Poachers are everywhere in this area," said Vallarino, 40. "Without a guard they will take them away." Volunteers carry the eggs to the Hermosa Beach camp, where they take about 50 days to incubate. The hatchlings are then released into the ocean.
To avoid patrols, some poachers catch female turtles at sea, slice them open to remove their eggs and then dump the bodies into the ocean. On a single day last month, 80 such carcasses washed up on a beach in the southern state of Oaxaca.
In a country where the minimum wage is just more than 45 pesos a day, the incentive is clear. An egg sells for as much as 60 pesos (US5.55) on the black market, meaning a single nest can yield 6,000 pesos.
Juan Carlos Cantú, director of Defenders of Wildlife's Mexican branch, said poverty alone doesn't explain the egg trade. In coastal areas, people sometimes collect eggs to buy alcohol and clothes.
"We've found that egg stealing increases on weekends and before festivals it isn't a question of needing resources to survive," Cantú said.
All five species of marine turtles that inhabit Mexico's waters are listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union, based in Gland, Switzerland.
Three are considered "critically endangered," meaning they face an extremely high risk of extinction. The leatherback, which can weigh as much as 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) and measure up to 1.8 meters (6 feet) in length, is the most threatened.
Until the 1980s, Mexico was the leatherbacks' most important breeding ground, Cantú said. Since then, the number of females nesting in Mexico each year has fallen to less than 10 from 880.
To help curb the illegal trade, groups such as Defenders, Greenpeace and Wildcoast have begun campaigns to convince Mexican men that eating turtle eggs does nothing for their virility.
One Defenders' poster shows a man with turtle egg dripping from his mouth along with the caption: "You drank the lie turtle eggs are not aphrodisiacs."
Wildcoast's posters of sparsely clothed models above a caption that reads, "my man doesn't need turtle eggs" provoked objections from the National Women's Institute, which complained that it was demeaning to women.
Wildcoast said the billboard is effective because it attracts attention.
"In the end, we came up with the idea of using a good- looking woman saying that, 'if you are consuming sea turtle eggs you are letting me know that you are not man enough,' " Navarro said.
The campaigns have done little to persuade Díaz to drop the habits of a lifetime. Turtle eggs make men more potent, and he recently ate some, courtesy of his brother-in-law who works near the beach, Díaz said.
"Thirty years ago my grandmother took me to the market to drink turtle blood," Díaz said. "It's just like any other kind of seafood." |
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