Vanishing Species : Sea Turtles: Drowning in Controversy

When the ship was 15 miles out to sea, Tim Fontaine ordered the tons of turtles over the side.

Turtle handlers scurried for the first of the cardboard boxes that lined the deck. They cut the strapping tape, pulled off the cover and gingerly lifted the hard-shelled cargo. One by one, they dropped the turtles, each about the size of a dinner plate, into the water.

Three hours later, 1,634 more Kemp’s ridley sea turtles--the rarest of all turtle species and one that is becoming more scarce each year--were swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Longhorn was headed for its dock at Port Aransas, Tex.

Fontaine, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Galveston, Tex., was already talking about the beer and champagne he would drink when he got his land legs back. It had been a busy night because one of the rental trucks used to transport the ridleys from his lab to Port Aransas had broken down.

Raised in Captivity

Now the turtles were all safely in the water. It was the end of another year of raising them from hatchlings to be released as yearlings--an attempt to save the species from extinction. Even after 10 years, success is still uncertain. Scientists have not yet determined how old the ridleys must be to mate, and so far, no new nesting grounds have been established on the Texas coast.

Each year, Kemp’s ridley numbers decline. One estimate is that there may be only 600 egg-laying females left in the world, down from the 40,000 that gathered in 1947 on the Mexican beach that is still their only nesting ground.

“If something isn’t done to save these turtles, they’re going to disappear from the face of the earth,” Fontaine said.

Few Natural Enemies

Kemp’s ridley sea turtles eventually weigh between 40 and 60 pounds. They have few natural enemies once they reach the size of those dropped over the side of the Longhorn, though sharks consider them tasty fare.

Environmentalists contend that the major threat to the ridley--indeed, to all sea turtles in American waters--is the nets of some 17,000 shrimp boats that ply the Gulf of Mexico and the southern Atlantic. The green, leatherback and hawksbill turtles are also endangered species, and survival of the loggerhead sea turtle is considered threatened.

Sea turtles have been around for 185 million years, but, in one human generation, they have come to the edge of extinction in American waters.

The National Marine Fisheries Service’s estimate--fiercely contested by the shrimping industry--is that 47,970 sea turtles of all varieties are caught each year in shrimp nets, and that more than 11,000 of them drown.

Environmentalists and government experts say there is an answer to the problem. It is a “turtle excluder device” or TED, a piece of equipment that can be sewn into shrimping nets to allow turtles to escape without releasing the shrimp catch. Developed by the federal government over the last decade at a cost of $3.4 million, it is due to be phased in as mandatory equipment for shrimpers beginning July 15.

But that will not happen if the shrimpers have anything to say about it. Saving the turtles is shaping up as a classic battle between the richest fishery in the United States and environmentalists, backed by government regulations, intent on putting preservation ahead of profit.

Figures Held Exaggerated

The shrimpers say the TED doesn’t work--that they lose shrimp and that the devices are bulky and dangerous to have aboard. Further, they say, the TED is a government boondoggle and the turtle-kill figures are wildly exaggerated.

“We’re not the culprits making these turtles disappear,” said Tee John Mialjevich, president of Concerned Shrimpers of Louisiana. “They don’t have any actual figures on how many turtles we catch in the gulf. I’ve caught six turtles since 1965, and all six went back into the water.”

Mialjevich, 6 foot 4 and 327 pounds, was adamant that neither he nor any other Louisiana shrimper will ever use a TED. He said the burden of bringing back the Kemp’s ridley should rest with Fontaine’s turtle-stocking program.

Hazard Denied

The environmentalists say that although the shrimpers have been dragging their feet for years, it is only a matter of time until the devices are in use--and that it will be sooner rather than later. They say that the equipment does work and deny that it poses any hazard. They defend their turtle mortality figures as based on scientific calculations. They say they are determined that the sea turtles will be protected, no matter what the cost to the shrimping industry.

Shrimpers are not the worst culprits in the near-extinction of the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, just the latest. The species has only one known nesting ground, a Mexican gulf beach called Rancho Nuevo. The decimation of the turtles came mainly because their eggs are considered a delicacy and an aphrodisiac. Year after year, Mexican peasants would raid the nesting area to dig up thousands of turtle eggs and sell them.

Soldiers Guard Eggs

In 1968, the Mexican government became alarmed at the dwindling numbers of turtles returning to Rancho Nuevo, and began stationing soldiers on the beach during the egg-laying season. Fontaine said that the soldiers have orders to shoot first and ask questions later if they catch anyone poaching turtle eggs.

“Those guys are the meanest-looking people you’ve ever seen,” he said.

In 1978, the National Marine Fisheries Service began the program to foster a second nesting area in Texas. It entails digging up 2,000 eggs each year and transporting them to Padre Island off the Texas coast. There, the eggs are hatched and the young turtles are allowed to scurry from the sand to the water. Then they are put in boxes and carted off to Galveston for a year of care in the lab. The researchers’ theory is that once the yearlings are taken to sea, they will remember where they were hatched, as salmon do, and return to the Texas beach at maturity to lay eggs.

At about the time that program was begun, biologists began to suspect that the population of all sea turtles was dwindling, and that the decline was now due largely to the number caught in shrimpers’ nets. Work began to develop a device to allow the turtles to escape from the nets.

Excluder Given Away

In 1981, the fisheries service brought out the first working model of the TED. Besides making its own tests, the service began giving the devices to shrimpers, on the perhaps naive theory that they would become popular. The shrimpers said they were too heavy, so the service made a lighter version. They said they were too bulky, so they made them collapsible. The biggest complaint, however, was that they just didn’t work.

“All of our testing shows that it does work,” said Terry Henwood, one of the developers of the TED. “I’ve never seen any scientific test of theirs that showed it reduced the catch.”

As the years went by, it became obvious that the shrimpers were not going to use the TED voluntarily.

“We really weren’t getting anywhere,” said Chuck Oravetz, the chief of the U.S. Fisheries’ protected species branch.

Lawsuit Threatened

The issue came to a head last year, when the Center for Environmental Education announced its intention to sue the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees the fisheries, for violations of the Endangered Species Act. That led to a compromise in which industry representatives and environmentalists met over a period of weeks to hammer out binding rules for the use of the devices.

When it was all over, 11 of the 12 negotiators signed the agreement. The one who did not was Tee John Mialjevich, who left the negotiations suddenly when his mother died. Since then, he has embarked on a campaign to unite the shrimpers against any new regulations, and has attracted thousands of people to rallies in Louisiana.

At public hearings along the gulf coast as well as in Washington, angry shrimpers have vowed never to use the devices, even though just catching a sea turtle carries with it a $20,000 fine. Politicians have joined the TED opposition, especially in Louisiana, where shrimping is one of the few profitable industries left in the state.

“Turtles don’t vote,” said Louisiana Gov. Edwin W. Edwards.

Legislation Proposed

Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), who has referred to the issue as “a few measly turtles,” has introduced a bill to withhold funds for enforcing use of the equipment from the fisheries service next year.

“All I know is we’ve got hundreds of families genuinely facing critical hardships if they implement the regulations,” Livingston said. “Certainly, no one wants the turtles extinct, but I think they can wait another year.”

Michael Bean of the Washington-based Environmental Defense Fund said he hopes that cooler heads in the fishing industry will prevail over the Mialjevich forces, but he added: “What the ultimate outcome will be is anyone’s guess at this point.”

Back aboard the Longhorn, Carole Allen, who chairs the conservation organization Help Endangered Animals--Ridley Turtles, sat on the aft deck surrounded by the emptied cartons and musing about the ridley and why it is important to save it.

To her, she said, it came down to a moral question:

“This creature has been here since the dinosaur age and it isn’t declining because of something unknown,” she said. “Who are we to alter the species that are out there? Just because we can’t see them all the time doesn’t mean they aren’t wonderful creatures.”