Question 2: Conservation measures

2(a) Since most countries regulate the direct exploitation of sea turtles and sea turtle products (quotas and/or prohibitions on egg harvests and sea turtle catch, for instance), can one consider that such direct exploitation no longer represents a threat to sea turtle populations? What is the impact of these regulatory measures on sea turtle conservation efforts? Are you aware of any country where such regulatory measures are in place, but where sea turtles and their products are nevertheless still excessively exploited?

Dr. S. Eckert:

5.128. Direct exploitation is still a serious problem for turtles in the countries involved in this dispute. In the United States the problem is highly reduced, but the taking of eggs, killing of nesting females and in a few cases netting of foraging turtles still take place. Most of such illegal take is limited to US territories in the Western Pacific (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands) and the Caribbean (Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands) (NMFS and USFWS, 1996a-f, pers. obs.). Sometimes such illegal take is by foreign fishing vessels that stop at uninhabited islands and atolls within US jurisdiction (NMFS and USFWS, 1996a-f). Generally, however, direct harvest is a minor problem in the US when compared to other countries.

5.129. In Malaysia, it is clear that illegal egg harvest continues at a level which threatens sea turtle populations (Eckert, 1993). In Thailand, both the illegal taking of eggs and the killing of nesting females and foraging turtles continues (Hill, 1991, 1992; Chantrapornsyl, 1997). In India, the direct harvest of eggs and meat is apparently still a problem. I have no information on sea turtle threats in Pakistan. Thailand, Malaysia, India, and the United States (and likely Pakistan) have regulations in place to protect sea turtles and their habitats, yet these stock are still stressed by anthropogenic sources; thus it is clear that lack of wildlife law enforcement is a problem. It is generally clear that more resources need to be applied to protecting turtles than is currently being done in all countries.

Dr. J. Frazier:

5.130. To put this question in context, it is useful to reflect on the contemporary situation regarding hallucinogenic drugs, such as cocaine, crack, hashish, marijuana, and opium, to name just a few. In theory, most modern states have strict controls on the import, export, sale and consumption of some, if not all of these drugs. Nonetheless, illegal commerce in these items is probably higher now than it has ever been in the history of the planet. Man-made laws do not necessarily result in a significant modification of the human activities that they are meant to regulate. If drug trafficking cannot be controlled - despite the fact that it is an international priority, there is little chance that the illegal use of sea turtles and their products will be controlled.

5.131. Depending on the place and situation, direct exploitation of sea turtles (legal or illegal) may or may not represent a major risk to the survival of the populations. Little systematic information seems to be available from Thailand, but what is known indicates that direct exploitation on eggs and turtles has resulted in major declines, and that the practice continues. Since these populations are evidently badly decimated, any source of mortality - especially concentrated on animals that are breeding or near breeding - will reduce the chances of population recovery.

5.132. Up until recently, there has been sustained direct exploitation on most nesting populations in both East and West Malaysia. However, recently enacted, strict regulations for fuller protection are reported to have stopped, or greatly reduced direct exploitation. Depending on how effectively the regulations are observed and enforced, specific populations may or may not be under continued risk from direct exploitation. In Pakistan, there is very little information from the remote Province of Baluchistan, but what is available indicates that direct exploitation - especially on breeders - has been, and continues to be, a major risk to these populations. There is apparently no significant direct exploitation in Sind. Strict laws and regulations may be observed in some parts of India, but there are continuing accounts of heavy predation on turtles at sea, off the coast of Gahirmatha, Orissa (Pandav et. al., 1997). Egg harvesting surely also continues, along vast stretches of remote beach. However, there are no quantitative data. Illegal exploitation of turtle eggs may occur occasionally in the southeast of the continental United States, but it is thought to be minimal (National Research Council, 1990). Persistent exploitation (illegal) on turtles and eggs apparently continues in some Pacific islands, and the populations may be so small in some cases that this mortality may be a major risk (Eckert, 1993).

5.133. Since conservation involves the integration of biological information with social and political actions, impacts important to conservation can (and must) be evaluated in the organisms involved (in the present case, sea turtles) as well as in the societies that interact with these organisms and/or the environments in which they live. Hence, impacts of regulatory measures must be evaluated in different ways. Public awareness of the plight of marine turtles often increases because of regulatory measures; from personal experience, I know that this is the case in India, Malaysia, Pakistan and the United States (I have never been to Thailand). Clearly, actual protection of turtles or their habitats has also been achieved by regulatory measures. Protection of nesting beaches and nesting turtles has been facilitated by these means in each of these countries. In the United States, stiff fines for poaching sea turtles have been published in the newspapers, and are likely to have dissuaded would-be poachers. Reglamentation for the use of TEDs on the Atlantic coast of the United States, where forward looking state governments took the initiative before the federal government, have resulted in reducing mortality of turtles in shrimp trawls (Crowder et. al., 1995).

5.134. There is probably not a country in the world where despite the existence of national (or indeed regional and/or international) regulatory measures, there is not an active trade in some parts or products of sea turtles. What is open to debate is the phrase "still excessively exploited"; by definition illegal activities are difficult to trace and document. Bearing this limitation in mind, according to the best information available, it is thought that excessive exploitation may be occurring with ridley turtles off Gahirmatha and West Bengal (Silas et. al., 1983b; Pandav et. al., 1997); green turtles in Baluchistan (Groombridge, 1989); green and ridley turtles in Thailand (Supot, in press); and green and hawksbill turtles in South Pacific Islands under US jurisdiction (Eckert, 1993).

Mr. M. Guinea:

5.135. Direct exploitation of sea turtles, their eggs and their products continues to be a threat to sea turtle populations. In spite of excellent legislation some countries have problems with the enforcement of their laws in relation to wildlife. Wildlife law infringements may be perceived as less important when compared with crimes against persons or property. Laws that cannot be enforced are an impediment to genuine progress in wildlife conservation.

5.136. Legislation prohibiting the direct exploitation of sea turtles are essential for establishing a base from which prosecutions can proceed.

5.137. Enforcement of legislation is a problem in all countries. There will be cases of non-compliance with every conservation measure. I am unaware of any first hand knowledge of where sea turtle quotas have been flouted.

Mr. H.-C. Liew:

5.138. In some countries, especially the developing countries, direct exploitation are still very much a threat to sea turtle populations. For example, egg harvest is still significant in Southeast Asia due to insufficient quotas, poaching, poor enforcement and management problems. There may be hatcheries that practice very good conservation but neighbouring islands or countries that share the same population of turtles may not. In a recent paper, Limpus (1997) showed that excessive egg harvests are still serious threats while the total green turtle kills in Bali approached 30,000 annually in recent years. The impact of such large kills would overshadow the impact caused by shrimp trawling.

5.139. Table 1 below summarises Limpus's findings. In this table, there was no indication of fisheries bycatch mortality for green turtles, hawksbill turtles, olive ridleys and leatherbacks. It may be insignificant compared to the other causes or no information is available. However, shrimp or prawn trawling in Australia was indicated as a major threat to the loggerhead and flatback turtle populations. All the countries listed in Table 1 have turtle conservation programmes and regulatory measures but most are still experiencing declining trends in their turtle populations. Similar situations exist in many other countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Dr. I. Poiner:

5.140. All sea turtle populations in the Indo Pacific region including southeast Asia, are severely depleted and/or are subjected to over-harvest (legal and illegal) and/or excessive incidental mortality. Some countries (e.g., Malaysia and Thailand) have instigated management measures to prohibit or control egg and sea turtle harvests but there is no evidence of recovery of these populations (Limpus, 1997). The current Indonesian meat and egg harvest (legal and illegal) is likely to be unsustainable despite a variety of conservation management measures introduced by the Indonesian government (Monanunsap, 1997; Limpus, 1997).

5.141. Local/regional approaches to management are unlikely to be successful since sea turtle breeding stocks usually comprise multiple rookeries within a region while foraging areas and developmental habitats comprise a mix of turtles from several genetically distinct stocks (Bowen et. al., 1995; Broderick et. al., 1994). The breeding adults usually migrate relatively long distances from the foraging areas to the traditional breeding rookeries. For example, the Australian nesting populations of loggerhead sea turtles are genetically distinct from those in other countries and within Australia there are two genetically independent breeding populations. Breeding females migrate up to 2,600 km from feeding areas to aggregate at traditional nesting beaches (breeding males have not been studied). In Eastern Australia, females migrate from northern and eastern Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia. In Western Australia, recorded migrants come from Northern and Western Australia and Indonesia. Mean remigration period is 3.8yr. At the completion of the breeding season the female returns to the same feeding site as she occupied before the breeding migration.

2(b) Could you comment on how the socio-economic factors prevailing in the five countries involved in this dispute (e.g. history of direct exploitation of sea turtles and sea turtles products, practices and techniques of the fishing industry) interact with sea turtle conservation requirements? Do these factors influence the choice and enforcement of conservation programmes?

Dr. S. Eckert:

5.142. Probably the greatest effect of socio-economic that I am aware of is on enforcement of environmental regulations and on amount of information gathered on the fisheries themselves. Countries with less financial resources seem unable or unwilling to expend these limited resources on wildlife law enforcement. A similar situation exists for the monitoring of fishery efficiency. There are seldom the financial resources or personnel to monitor fisheries, or fish resources. Thus, resource managers seldom understand the resource they are assigned to manage or what factors may be impacting this resource.

5.143. Socio-economic can also play a role in how various shrimp fisheries treat bycatch. It has been my experience that in the US bycatch is regularly discarded in favour of keeping only the target species (shrimp) as the market for bycatch product is limited. The only bycatch utilized is taken home by the fisherman for their own use. In other countries, bycatch seems to be utilized more often for both personal and commercial use. I do not have quantified data for this impression as it is just based on personal experience after having worked in a number of third world countries. One note about this bycatch. In studies of bycatch by shrimp trawling it has been found that such bycatch is often made up of undersized commercially viable species. If these species were left to grow to commercial size, the resulting economic gain can be significant (Amelang, 1994, Dayton et. al., 1995). Limiting (or eliminating) bycatch by shrimp fisheries, whether that bycatch has immediate commercial value or not, is probably a better strategy for long term resource management.

5.144. Relative to how socio-economic might affect the application of TEDs as a conservation tool, I see very little reason to suspect that there would be an effect. Except for the possible impact of reducing commercially utilized bycatch, TEDs should not change the economics of a shrimp fishery. TEDs are incredibly simple devices to construct from local materials, require little special skills above what is already in use by shrimp fisherman and plans for their construction are available (e.g. Mitchell et. al., 1995). Considering the costs of fuel, nets and other required equipment for such a fishery, it is doubtful that TEDs would add significantly to the cost of fishing and may actually be advantageous (Easley, 1982). Further, my limited experience working on shrimp boats suggests that deploying and operating these devices take very little special skills or handling. It must be remembered that the first TEDs were developed and used by shrimp fisherman as a way to reduce fouling and bycatch problems, long before sea turtles were of concern.

Dr. J. Frazier:

5.145. Conservation activities, for sea turtles or any other biological resource, must be seen within a matrix of social and political interactions. Biological conservation is not exclusively a sub-discipline of biology, but rather an activity with clear political dimensions (as clearly illustrated by the present dispute). In this respect, it must be understood that issues of biological conservation and human rights are intricately intertwined, and that without resolving one, meaningful advancements with the other are not possible (Frazier, 1997b). Clearly, nutritional rights, or food security, is a fundamental component of human rights, and as long as large sectors of modern nation states persist in a state of malnutrition and hunger, human rights abuses will continue. In this circumstance, true conservation of biological resources will be an illusive dream. Hence, with or without TEDs, with or without integrated sea turtle conservation plans, there will be no lasting conservation of sea turtles on this planet while the majority of humanity slides ever deeper into poverty and finds ever fewer alternatives for survival. While this problem is worldwide, and present in all modern nation states, it is most intense in the "Third World". It is therefore fundamental to understand how modern fisheries practices have developed and how they relate to the question of food security and human rights.

5.146. Mathew (1990) provided a brief evaluation of the fishing industry in five different Asian countries, making comparisons between historic, social and legal aspects. In his description of the situation in Malaysia, he drew from various in-country studies (e.g., Gibbons, 1976). He described how the introduction of trawling resulted very quickly in violent conflicts, including physical attacks, the burning of trawlers, and murder of fishermen. The small-scale fishers charged that trawlers destroyed their gear and would deplete their fishing grounds. This was unlike the situation in most other countries in the region, where it took several years for conflicts to manifest themselves. After a study, the Government of Malaysia established zoning regulations to keep the trawlers out of the coastal areas; ahead of many other countries, the government introduced legislation to eliminate conflict. Yet, it was reported that enforcement was inadequate, and social conflict - fueled by ethnic divisions - became very violent and bloody. In the end, countless full-time, traditional fishermen lost control of, and access to, their traditional fisheries resources. The fishing sector was restructured from autonomous full-time fishers to capital-intensive enterprises. Although these organizations were called "co-operatives", the authors observed that "they are 'cartels' of local political and economic elites". with little if any active participation of fishermen in management. Evidently, the people who depended directly on the resources being exploited were excluded from the major decision-making process.

5.147. The authors explain that although (as is the case everywhere) scientific information necessary to plan or manage properly is inadequate: "Malaysia is the first developing country to attempt seriously to limit fishing effort in response to indications of overfishing". Yet, while in theory the zoning regulations drawn up by Government make good sense, diverse sources cited in Mathew (1990) - including the Head of the Legislation Department - have highlighted the inadequacies of enforcement and the lack of trawler's respect for the zones (e.g., only 9 per cent of respondents answered that the ban of trawlers within 5 miles of shore is effective). The authors indicate that, like in most other countries in the world where fisheries have been "modernized" and markets "liberalized", the activity is controlled by the elite hegemony, resulting in a socio-political situation in which the full-time, traditional fishers would be the last to benefit from "modernization" and the liberalization of market forces.

5.148. For Thailand, Mathew (1990) describes how the well-intentioned, and generally well-conceived fisheries management plans of the government were foiled by political clout from an industry that is export oriented (and provides a major share of the country's foreign exchange earnings). He explains that Government has been unable to implement critical management measures: "the state has a tendency to swap foreign exchange for long-term sustenance of the fishery". In the end, the trawler owners basically do as they like, even scuttling plans to close entry to the fishery, a measure which is widely recognized as being urgently needed. The fleet provides a classic example of an overcapitalized venture, and because of the degree of overfishing, the Gulf of Thailand is often characterized as an "underwater desert", even by local establishments.

5.149. While there were no immediate, violent conflicts with the introduction of trawling in Thailand, as occurred in neighbouring nations where small-scale fishers depend strongly on fisheries resources, violent clashes with trawlers did eventually occur. Mathew (1990) suggests that the relatively few social problems related to impacts of trawling was largely due to two major factors. Firstly, he suggests that Thais may be "more tolerant of injustice", than are some other people. Secondly, there was no well established, or well organized, sector of society that had traditionally depended on marine fisheries. Hence, according to Mathew (1990), the affected groups were not sufficiently organized and animated to resist incursions of the trawlers.

5.150. Yamamoto (1994) provided a later synthesis of the fisheries situation in Thailand, giving a much more critical view of the social and environmental effects of trawling. He reported that nearly 90 per cent of the "fishery establishments", were "households" which worked in the coastal fishery, as compared to the remainder which were enterprises, focused on offshore and distant water fisheries. He observed that "since its inception, the Thai trawl fishery has come into conflict with coastal fishery, as it tends to operate in the coastal waters". With the rapid growth of the trawler fleet, some of which operated without permits, demersal resources were overexploited. The coastal fishers experienced declining resources, conflicts and lowered standard of living. In order to resolve this, he proposed a new law that would, inter alia assign clear access to resources, and "discourage the continued operation of trawl fishery...".

5.151. In the case of India, Debnath (1994) has described the situation regarding the fishworkers, some 7,000,000 people who live by artisanal fisheries. He clearly describes how the "development" and mechanization of fisheries has left the vast majority of these people actually worse off than they were before "development". Social conditions related to equity, gender, job stability and security, are worse than before, while many basic fisheries resources are over-exploited, making traditional food sources inaccessible and insufficient for this enormous number of people. The ever-present problems between industrialized/mechanized fisheries and artisanal fisheries were explained: the artisanal fishers have not just lost access to their resource base, but through a process of "modernization" have been subjected to violence. Of the imported technologies which are responsible for these dire social and environmental problems, bottom trawling was singled out as one of the most prominent causes (see also Norse, 1997a).

5.152. This process of modernization and consequent loss of access to resources by a large segment of the fishing community has been abundantly documented in the studies of social scientists. What is remarkable is that although these scientists are trained to evaluate the functioning of human social systems and human interactions, their opinions and participation are routinely absent from discussions about fisheries development and resource management. The writings of Professor Conner Bailey (e.g., 1985: 1986; 1988a; 1988b; 1988c; 1988d; 1989; Bailey and Zerner, 1988; Bailey and Jentoft, 1990; Bailey et al., 1986) provide in-depth analyses, drawing mainly from South East Asia, with central relevance to the shrimp/prawn and trawling industries. He has shown, in case after case, how fisheries development activities that focus on gross productivity and income generation have resulted in increasing social and economic polarization, which produce grievous social degradation, stress and disorder, exacerbating problems of poverty. This is to say nothing of the gross depletion of marine resources on which millions of people have depended for generations, resources no longer available or adequate for feeding their families or for sustaining their participation in local, national or regional markets. These people are not just passive bystanders to change and development. Since at least the 1940's, coastal fishing communities have participated in material modernization processes in Southeast Asia. The sale of fresh and preserved fish, shellfish and other marine products has provided cash incomes for other consumer goods, including investments in modernization of boats and equipment (Frith, 1946; Fraser, 1960).

5.153. Bailey's analyses have shown that development initiatives, fueled by foreign aid from diverse sources, are commonly linked also to foreign investments and interests. Of those technologies introduced into the Third World in an effort to increase fisheries productivity, the bottom (or otter board) trawl is a prime example, and because of the extraordinarily export value of shrimp\prawn products, shrimp trawling provides some of the clearest examples of these unpredicted (and often unspoken) environmental and social consequences to development. Taken together, the usual result of these events is that the traditional resource base of a powerless majority is expropriated by a powerful minority, routinely with extra-national interests. In Bailey's words: "Emerson (1980:20) noted that, in the context of fisheries development, 'free-market forces may only reinforce absolute poverty and structural inequality in the name of economic efficiency...' ". "But it became obvious that producing evidence of resource depletion was not the same thing as mobilizing political will to restrict the operations of wealthy and politically well connected entrepreneurs." (Bailey, 1988d:41). As Bailey et. al. (1986:1270) explain: "In the context of an open access resource, the result of this process is a de facto reallocation of access favoring the minority which limits the ability of the majority to earn adequate incomes from traditional pursuits". "By promoting the use of highly productive technologies without simultaneously strengthening institutional capacities to manage and allocate finite resources among competing users, international development assistance agencies are contributing to structural problems and policy distortions which pose serious threats to the majority of those employed in the fisheries sector".

5.154. The studies of Professor George Kent (e.g., Kent, 1980; 1983; 1984; 1985; 1986; 1987; 1989; 1994) provide an additional lens for evaluating the socio-economic underpinnings of fisheries development, characterized by export-oriented shrimp fisheries. For years, and in diverse fora, he has shown that pledge of feeding the Third World, equity and social justice has not been met by increased fisheries production. There are several reasons for this. Much of what is caught is wasted: Alverson et. al. (1994) estimated that more than 27 million metric tons of bycatch are dumped back into the sea, most of it dead or mauled. Furthermore, more than a third of what is caught and landed is not for direct human use, but processed for fertilizer, livestock feeds, etc. (i.e., a third of the landed catch, instead of being used for feeding people, is destined for more round-about routes to producing food, directed by processes of income generation). In summary, this is an industry that is characterized for being grossly overcapitalized, with a distribution of resources heavily biased toward the industrialized countries: fish is caught in the Third World, where there are intense problems of malnutrition and protein need, and exported to the richer nations, where there is an excess of food. Kent (1994) shows that there is a clear inverse relationship between dependence on fish as a basic food and income level. At the same time, there are clear cases of countries, for example Bangladesh, where despite a traditional dependency on fish for food, and burgeoning human populations, annual exports of fish increase, while available fish for national consumption decreases (Kent, 1994). Recent affairs in Thailand serve as another clear example: in 1996 it was the world's largest exporter of both rice and farmed shrimp, yet the cost of food increased more than that of housing or clothing (from a 1990 base of 100, food had risen to 132 by 1995) (Europa, 1997:3191-3195), this is for a 1995 population with a GNP of US$2,800 per capita (World Bank, 1997:9).

5.155. As Kent states: "Fish, like other food products entering the market system, tends to flow toward the rich simply because the rich can outbid the poor." (Kent, 1980:7); "Thus, fish continue to migrate after they are caught. They tend to move from the more needy to the less needy." (Kent, 1983:13). "The fish and other food which moves in international trade is only a small share of the total amount of food produced and consumed. But the pattern of the poor feeding the rich is found within as well as among nations. The thesis that the poor feed the rich is not only about international relations; it is about social structures based on the market system wherever they occur. This regular flow of food toward the top, within countries as well as among countries, helps to account for the chronic undernutrition at the bottom." (Kent, 1985:288). "Often there is some compensation for increasing exports by the increasing imports of food. Typically, however, the foreign exchange earned from the export of food is not devoted to purchasing low cost nutritive foods for the needy, but is diverted to the purchase of luxury foods and other products in demand by local elites." (Kent, 1985:289). In addition to negative effects on that part of society that is most at risk, there are also deleterious effects on the fishery: "When people fish for their own food there is such a thing as sufficiency. In the commercial orientation, however, when people fish for profit, there is no such thing as enough. As one observer put it, 'technology makes overfishing possible, but profits provide the incentive'". (Kent, 1986:138).

5.156. Kent (1987) provides an evaluation of fish and nutrition in India, and the statistics that he presents are remarkable. Although India is one of the top fish producing nations in the world, it is has one of the lowest rates of per capita consumption. Religious and food preferences do not provide a simple explanation for this anomaly, because many people in coastal states have the habit of consuming fish. Over the last few decades, there have been outstanding increases in fisheries production as well as exports. At the same time, the cost of fish for Indians has skyrocketed, especially in comparison to other food articles, and other commodities. Hence, major increases in fisheries production are not helping to feed nationals.

To Continue With Chapter 5.157