ANNEX IV

TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING WITH EXPERTS HELD ON 21 AND 22 JANUARY 1998

First day - 21 January 1998

Chairman

1. I would like to welcome the scientific experts as well as the parties to this meeting. Let me start by informing you that the proceedings are going to be recorded. Therefore, when taking the floor, representatives, experts are requested to use the microphones and to speak slowly and clearly. A transcript will be made of this meeting and it is the intention of the Panel to attach the transcript to the Panel Report as part of the record. At this stage I would like first of all to thank the experts very sincerely for the effort they have already put in and the very hard work that they have put in over a very short period of time to respond to the request from the Panel for them to give advice and to the answers to the questions that we have put to them. As you know, we are operating under very stringent time constraints and we have to produce reports within certain time frames and this puts enormous pressure on all persons involved in these proceedings. But I would like to say a special word of thanks to the experts who have come out of the blue to assist in this process.

2. The purpose of this meeting is really to allow the experts to expand on their written reports and to discuss amongst themselves in front of us for the benefit of the Panel. The documents which have been produced are very substantive and obviously its not a matter of repeating them all, but really more of highlighting the main points, commenting as appropriate on colleagues reports, so that the Panel can be as fully informed as possible regarding sea turtle conservation problems so that we can be in a better position to assess the controversial issues underlying the facts of this case.

3. Now in this regard the parties will be given an opportunity during this meeting to seek clarification regarding the reports of the experts and to express their views on them. It is not the purpose of the meeting though to hear further argumentation or new evidence which the parties did not submit by the time of the second meeting of the Panel which was held in September 1997. Similarly, we do not intend to have formal statements by the parties, the purpose of this meeting is to hear the experts and to put questions to the experts including though from scientific experts of the parties. But parties will of course be allowed to address matters raised by the experts and the Panel expects the parties to put all their questions in the context of this meeting and to seek replies from the experts within this meeting.

4. The Panel considers that by the end of the meeting tomorrow there will have been sufficient time for the parties to make all the necessary comments even if they have already missed some of the deadlines in the past, the opportunity is now to get their points across and to get answers from the experts. As I said at the beginning, this will be a recorded proceeding, so to the answers will be written and will be in the record. Therefore, the Panel does not intent to prolong the process beyond the end of this meeting tomorrow. We see this as the final point at which comments on comments and comments are going to have to come to an end but it is really an expert process that we are in rather than any sort of continuation of the previous argumentation that we heard from the parties.

5. Experts can if they want react to what has been said by the parties and priority will be given to the experts and therefore parties will be asked to limit their interventions to questions and comments related to the issues raised by the experts. The Panel will not take account of interventions outside this framework. I want to stress that the proceedings are confidential, everything which is being said in this room is subject to the rules of the Dispute Settlement Understanding and the Code of Conduct.

6. I would also like to explain how the Panel intends to proceed in actually handling this meeting today and tomorrow. We propose first to invite statements by the experts focusing on their main points, their main arguments, main areas of contention and also, if necessary, where they see problems between their own and their colleagues reports. I propose that we have that process initially in alphabetical order and after the statements to allow the experts then a second round to make comments on each others presentations and to develop the discussion and argumentation.

7. When this is concluded, the parties to the dispute will be given an opportunity to put their questions and comments and again we would want to take that in series starting with the complaining parties in the order that we established in the earlier meetings, that is to say, Thailand, India, Pakistan and Malaysia followed by the United States. After this process we would then give the floor back to each expert again to give their final statement, their responses to the parties and their conclusions. Now, that is roughly the outline of how we expect it to go, of course as the discussion develops I would expect that the Panel will wish to interject questions and the parties may also wish to develop a freer discussion as it goes along.

8. But I think we have to keep in mind the time frame which is basically this afternoon and tomorrow morning and we would hope to be in a position to conclude this meeting by the end of the morning. Bearing in mind that there are ten speakers potentially and that we will have more than one round from at least half of them, I think it would be helpful to try and keep the interventions to the point and as brief as possible. Having said that, I don't wish to limit the experts in any way in what they want to say. I think that they are well aware of the issue that is before us, the terms of reference of the Panel, they have seen all the documentation in the dispute and I think really that it should be for them to present their reports in the way that they see best. That said I would like to now give the floor to the experts in alphabetical order and that means that I start with Dr. Eckert.

Dr. Eckert

9. Thank you Mr. Chairperson. My name is Scott Eckert and my current position is a senior research biologist at the Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute. I think, as you have probably all gathered from the information that we as a group of scientist have provided to you, the issues relative to sea turtle biology are not an easy issue to understand. Those of us who have been working with turtles for many years feel like we have barely scratched the surface of what we understand about the biology of these creatures. Much of the information available today about these creatures is limited to anecdotal information or very limited reports and so if you see confusion in some of the various documents and even disagreements in some of the documents, it often comes because there is not a ready set of reference materials you can turn to out there that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about the biology of a turtle.

10. And I think in our discussion as the day progresses you will see maybe some of those distinctions may get clarified once we have had a chance to chat with each other about our various opinions. My responses to the questions and I am going to limit this presentation to a very short summary of the points I tried to point out in my particular responses. I understand later that we will have some more time for more detail and if there are issues that I can present then in more detail with backing factual information I will do so.

11. The issue as I see it, we see turtle biology today and we see turtle populations in general is that virtually all sea turtle population are in trouble. There is ample evidence to indicate that all species are in decline with the possible exception of the Australian flatback (Natator depressus) because it is an endemic species to Australia and has not had the same sort of perturbations that we have seen from other populations. But on a global level, all sea turtle populations have exhibited decline, all sea turtle species have exhibited decline in their population to the point where we need to be worried about them. In a general sense, most of the problems faced by sea turtle populations or sea turtle species today are anthropogenic. While there are large numbers of various sources of mortality and various sources of problems that populations face, the so-called natural problems, natural threats, have been dealt with by the biology of the animals. The leatherback is the oldest of the species and it is about 120 million years old, that predates virtually every mammal on the planet. Therefore you can realize that these animals are finely tuned to the environments in which they live. Thus, the perturbations that have caused the declines have been primarily due to man's influence on these environments and on the species themselves. In my opinion, incidental take is the single most destructive threat faced by sea turtle populations in modern times.

12. There have been other threats, such as direct take which is a historically much longer term threat over the last maybe, 200 to 400 years, but in modern times, in the last 25 years, again this is my opinion but it is based on about 20 years of working with these creatures, incidental take is the most significant problem faced by all sea turtle species. There are other forms of challenges to the populations, such as habitat degradation is an issue in some countries and some areas, but when you read in our discussions that we feel that there are variations in the threats faced by sea turtles, you must realize that there are variations, there are quite a few different possible threats faced by sea turtle populations but the most significant ones are the incidental take of sea turtles by fishing industries.

13. The other point that I want to make is that of population status and stocks and we can have more discussion about this later. It is my opinion and my belief, again based on the years that I have been working with sea turtles, that at this time based on our current data available to us on the biology of sea turtles that we cannot consider individual stocks as individual management units and this is primarily because we do not know the full range of each of these stocks. Now there are some wonderful techniques coming on line that have allowed us to begin to solve some of those issues but it will be many many years until we can adequately say we know that this particular individual stock can be treated as independent management unit. I will go into more detail on that again as we bring the discussion back up. The other issue is conservation programmes. Conservation programmes must be specifically tailored to address the primary threat faced by the species and I do not think that there is any question among any of us on that particular issue. Which means that if bycatch is a primary reason for species to decline you must address bycatch. If nesting beach perturbations have been a problem, rather that the habitat degradation, the illegal or the legal harvest of eggs or of nesting females, those must be addressed specifically. I do not believe that it is possible to mitigate incidental take in fisheries if that is your problem by simply trying to enhance production on a nesting beach. The data that we have so far to date suggests that this is simply is not a valid mitigation measure. You must take a multifaceted approach to all of your conservation. Conservation must address the problems in order of priority and the problems in order of impact on the species itself. I think that that summarizes my comments for today, thank you.

Chairman

14. Thank you very much. Perhaps I could now invite Dr. Frazier to give his opening statement.

Dr. Frazier

15. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Panel, distinguished delegates, I would like to reciprocate the thanks, I think that it is extremely important that science be used to the fullest of its capabilities in the resolution of disputes when it concerns resources which are important to peoples and the development of countries. I realize that this is not a simple process, it has not been simple for me and I do not think that it has been simple for my colleagues. I'm sure it has complicated the lives of many people, nonetheless, I am grateful that we have been given the chance.

16. I am a biologist, I am trained in biology, I am trained in ecology. Those who have looked at my submission will see that I have made an effort to venture out into another discipline, the discipline which is to some of us in biology, is part of biology, but usually is described as a social science. You have read more about sea turtles, you will hear more about sea turtles, during the course of today and tomorrow than you will ever want to hear, I am sure. And I will do my best not to belabour more sea turtle biology, I think that the experts on either side of me can do that perfectly well; I would like to draw attention to something which I feel has been left out of this discussion. Why is there trade? Trade is for people, and trade must be done for the best number of people in a society. I am deeply concerned that the social aspects involved in this have not been included. I see us from a perspective of someone who has worked and spent their life studying turtles and dealing with different problems of conservation of sea turtles, and more recently fisheries issues, and I see, I perceive in a way we are very close to an exercise which could be described as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The Titanic was a large ship which was sunk in the North Atlantic, and to rearrange the deck chairs on a ship which is about to sink is a useless venture. The trade issue, I desperately hope, can be put into a social context. What we have in conservation biology is what is called a flagship species, a sea turtle is a charismatic animal. What we see here today is because sea turtles are charismatic. If this was involving stone fish or indeed sharks, other species of marine resources which one could equally argue are in desperate need of conservation, issues which in fact may have great value to societies of the countries here, I doubt very much that this would have occurred. It is because sea turtles are charismatic

that political action can be focused on. It is with this philosophy that I have addressed the question, hoping that using sea turtles as charismatic species, as flagships, very deep problems, environmental problems, fisheries problems can be resolved. It is my feeling that trade must benefit the largest number of people in a country. I am deeply concerned by the little I have been able to learn in the short time available about the way the shrimp industry functions. I am not convinced that the shrimp industry functions to help the largest number of people in the producing societies. I realize that I am taking this discussion away from the focus of the main points but nonetheless, I feel that, unless the root problems of a dispute, of a conflict in environment, in society are resolved, we are dangerously close to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Chairman

17. Thank you very much. Perhaps I could now invite Dr. Guinea to make his opening statement.

Mr. Guinea

18. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen thank you for the opportunity for me to highlight some of the aspects of my submission. I would like to thank the Chairman, Mr. Cartland and members of the Panel and would also like to take the opportunity to thank Ms. Cossy for organizing so well. I would also like to thank my colleagues for the stimulating presentations and the truthfulness of their discussions. I have been involved with sea turtle research since 1970 as a volunteer and over the last couple of decades as a lecturer at universities and so my presentation is based mainly on observations and discussions through scientific literature with colleagues, particularly in Australia. Shrimp trawling in the USA has been responsible for killing numerous sea turtles, there is no doubt about that and that is not a subject that we are arguing about. US legislation requiring TEDs on all shrimp trawl nets is believed to have reduced this mortality, the USA restrictions on imported shrimp is based on reasoning if the demographic units of sea turtles that inhabit the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea are depleted by present day trawling, then all sea turtles are threatened by shrimp trawling. The proposed solution to this problem is the forced implementation of TEDs for all shrimp trawl fleets in countries that export shrimp to the USA. During reading the material, I was looking for several aspects, several things in the submissions, the information I was looking for was the size of other fisheries and their respective effort in the impact on sea turtles, so this is other fisheries going on in conjunction with trawl fisheries. Statistics on sea turtle mortality by other fishing gear, for example gill nets existing shrimp management measures, protected areas for shrimp breeding grounds, nursery areas, protected areas rich in biodiversity, distance offshore and minimum depth limitations. I was also looking for gear limitations, size of vessels, types and numbers of nets and the economic trawl time durations for different shrimp species and these were not provided. Fishing activity, for example diurnal and nocturnal trawling restrictions and seasonal closures were also not provided.

19. Other points for consideration. I was looking at the embargo that had focused not on the product, but rather, how it was caught and the aspirations that all sea turtles would benefit once this threatening process is reduced. There is no indication or milestones or checks to ascertain if the embargo has had the desired effect in the affected countries. The questions that need to be considered. We are looking at sea turtle survival by measuring mortality and we should be looking for surrogate indicators of sea turtle mortality, things such as trawling effort and catch rates of turtles in trawl nets. Has the embargo reduced sea turtle mortality from trawling in those countries that did not comply with the TED requirements on all shrimp trawl nets? Did shrimp prices in the USA increase to entice countries to comply with TED requirements so as to gain access to a more lucrative market for their products? And were other markets found for shrimp that were banned from the USA market? Were shrimp or shrimp products transshipped through third party countries to the USA? And has the embargo had the desired effect? TEDs are just one option in the responsible management of a fishery. If the cause of the decline of a demographic unit is shrimp trawling, then the use of TEDs will assist in the recovery of the species. If, however, the breeding unit is threatened by excessive egg harvesting, then increase in hatchling survivorship should be the priority of management measures. If gill nets are the problem, then there are many options available to modify nets and their deployment to reduce the negative impacts on sea turtles. Data on sea turtle mortality and trawl fisheries are relatively easy to obtain, replicate and analyze. By their presence offshore trawlers are easily implicated in sea turtle strandings. Data on sea turtle mortality in gill nets are not so forthcoming and gill nets are not so readily implicated in the deaths of sea turtles. I am concerned that TEDs will be seen as the panacea to prevent sea turtle extinction. Other management options have to be employed as sea turtles are just one component of the by-catch. Restrictions on areas, seasons and fishing effort of trawls are needed to protect shrimp stocks, their habitats and other marine species which are less charismatic than marine turtles for example sea snakes. Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Chairman

20. Thank you very much. Perhaps I could now invite Dr. Liew to make his opening statement.

Mr. Liew

21. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Just to clarify, I am not Dr. but just Mr. Thanks again ladies and gentlemen. What I want to say here is there has been some confusion as to what constitutes a population in sea turtles. Some may define, for example, you are going to say the green turtle population in the world is facing problems, or the loggerhead population in the world is facing problems, but can we solve the problem by treating this as a global population? I think the way to manage sea turtles is we have to identify each individual population unit or breeding unit. Breeding units of loggerheads in the United States is different from the breeding units of loggerheads in Australia and each breeding unit or population unit has got its own problems. It is difficult for us to say if shrimp trawling harms loggerheads in the States, the same process would harm loggerheads in Australia and the same process would harm loggerheads in Oman. The Oman loggerhead population is still the largest population, but can we give a blanket coverage? So the similar situation applies for all the other species of sea turtles. We have to identify breeding units, we have to identify what are the actual threats for each of these breeding units and then tackle from there and thus work up priorities and handle them one by one. So to give a global consensus or issue saying that shrimp trawlers is the most important problem, then it would take the focus away from other problems that may be affecting that particular breeding unit. So I think, that is a point I wish to make in this first statement. Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Chairman

22. Thank you very much. Finally, perhaps I can ask Dr. Poiner, if he would make his opening statement.

Dr. Poiner

23. Thanks Mr. Chairman. My background, I come from probably a little bit different than the other four experts in the sense that my background is in dealing with the impacts of fishing on ecosystems and in particular looking at the impacts of prawn trawling, as well as shrimp trawling, but being an Australian we tend to refer to them as prawns, on the system, including the impacts on turtle populations. Indeed, it is a significant issue worldwide. I think in my opening statement, I'd like to mention from a technical point of view, summarize what the assessment process, that we go through in making decisions about the status of some of these stocks, because I think that its quite important that people may be not as technically involved, understand some of the problems associated with that process. So to put it simply, firstly, we look at biological and ecological data on life history and habitats of a population. Secondly we look at estimates of natural and anthropogenic rates of mortality by age or size on the population and use all that information, usually in modelling studies using mathematical models, to come up with estimates of the status of the stock and then following up often estimates of the chances of recovery of that stock following different, using different management measures. I think, be it turtles or be it southern blue finn tuna or be it many different marine populations and probably terrestrial populations too. Often there is general agreement, and I think what we are following here, there is a general agreement about the status of the stocks and that for sea turtles you have the status that they are fairly low population levels. However, you usually find that differences in terms of looking at recovery or under different management regimes and I think that is what you will find, both in terms of the cases being put by the experts and by the parties, that really we are trying to predict the future, when we are dealing with a great deal of uncertainty about the information and it is how we deal with that uncertainty generally results in different outcomes or different predictions. The other thing that I think is important to know is that this is a interactive process. It is not a set process and all the time more information more data comes in, so the process is repeated and hopefully gets a little bit more certain. I think that some of the uncertainty that often arises, and I think has arisen in this process is uncertainty about the identification of a stock. We have already heard two experts, one placing a lot of emphasis on the identification of breeding unit, I would tend to concur with that, another saying that we need to take a more global perspective. I think that there is often inter-annual fluctuations in many of the things, many of the information and I think how you deal with those fluctuations often has an impact on your outcomes. There are always logistical and jurisdictional problems that always create other uncertainties and dealing with such long-lived animals as turtles that there is simply difficulties in detecting trends in populations. How we deal with the uncertainty in our population estimates often leads to different predictions. I think that we need to be aware of it and I think what we will find and what we need to discuss today is not so much the status of the stock but looking at what is the likelihood of recovery using different management tools.

24. The other thing, just before I finish, I'd like to make a comment on because I, having been involved heavily in the introduction of TEDs and other bycatch reduction devices, certainly in Australian fisheries, I think there has been a little bit of, we need a little bit more elaboration on the introduction of some of those devises into a fishery. I think that it is important and I don't think that it is argued anywhere now that the properly selected and installed TEDs are very effective at reducing turtle catches and turtle mortalities. That's a fairly easily demonstrated thing, it's a fairly straightforward simple process of doing it, I can elaborate on that later. However, TED performance in a commercial fishery is a different issue and that's an issue of understanding the fishery and understanding the area where the fishery is being undertaken. And in understanding the fishery, that's both biophysical issues but also socio-economic issues and the introduction of TEDs via these indoor fisheries is not a simple process. It is a process that will often take, well from the Australian experience, it's is probably going to take us about six to eight years to do. And I think that's an important point and the other issue is that, be it TEDs or be it area closures or be it seasonal closures or be it a whole variety of management techniques, monitoring enforcement will always be an issue in the fishery. And I think I'll leave my opening comments at that point. Thanks Mr. Chairman.

Chairman

25. Thank you very much. I think those initial statements already point the way to further discussion on some issues and I think that perhaps, as we go into the second round, I think Dr. Eckert mentioned population status and stocks as something that he would like to come back to, and I think that we have already seen that there is some discussion there against the global approach as opposed to the breeding unit approach. I think perhaps you might want to take the opportunity of the second round to take us a little further into that subject. Dr. Eckert you have the floor.

Dr. Eckert

26. Thank you for the opportunity to visit the issue of stocks. Let me begin by saying that I am actually in complete agreement with my colleagues relative to the need to define what individual stock boundaries are. And that progress is being made in that particular direction. The advent of DNA fingerprinting or mtDNA, as it's referred to mitochondrial DNA, the linking of females to their native beaches is an excellent means by which we can begin to understand stocks. The increasing use of satellite telemetry to actually monitor the movement patterns of females away from their home stock is also excellent. All of these lead us down the path to being able to define stocks in terms of how we have traditionally measured them and that is based on the number of females annually nesting in a nesting beach. We are also improving our ability to estimate what percentage of the at least female population is represented by those nesting females on the beach. Where I have some concerns, is that an issue that has been defined and fairly well agreed upon, I think, by all the scientific panel, is that we need to address specific issues that are threatening the sea turtle populations. However, our ability to define the stock boundaries is still too immature to be able to do that. Now, what that means for us is the following. If we have a sea turtle population nesting in country X, I try not to use a specific country because this is just a model, but if we have a sea turtle population nesting in country X, and we have that population distributing to, say, 15 other countries of various regional distances from that nesting beach, we are then faced with saying OK, countries 1 through 10 have shrimp trawling and they have a high incidental take, countries 10 through 11 through 15 have gill net fleets and they're taking turtles in that fleet. Now, how do we, from a management perspective, apportion if we are not aware of the gill netting problem as a possible source of mortality, so for example if we only know where 10 of the 15 resident populations live, and we are seeing a population decline on our beach, who do we blame? And, what I'd have to say about that is right now, we simply do not have enough data to be able to tell you where the stocks in the world today go when they leave their nesting beaches. The other issue is that of juvenile foraging habitats in juveniles. The amount of information that we have on where juveniles reside, and juveniles will move through various habitats and various areas, they are not fixed on one particular regional jurisdiction, we know less about, much less about than we know about even with females. And in my own research, what I begun to realize is the more we look, the more range the stocks inhabit and the more overlaps there are between stocks, so your particular beach that you are monitoring the population on, on the foraging grounds it may overlap with 10 other populations.

27. So we have got to be very very aware of these issues if we are going to address the problem in a manner that is most applicable to the populations. Let me just briefly show you some examples of what I mean by this discussion. I am going to switch over to this microphone. Can everybody hear that needs to hear? Those two issues that we need to be aware of when we are talking about stocks, the one issue is what of the stock ranges. Where are these animals actually going after they leave their nesting beaches? Or where were these juveniles residing and how were they moving around between those areas? What I've argued is that we really don't know from most populations what is the full extent of their range or where these populations will move. What I've also argued is that we're getting there and in maybe another 10 years, we will be able to define those issues for you very well. There is a tremendous amount of very good work going on in Australia right now with this and the United States is also beginning to do quite a bit of work in gathering DNA tissue samples from turtles to be able to piece them back to their natal beaches, at least for nesting females.

28. But we have a very long way to go before we are going to be able to do that adequately. Now, as an example, there are some populations in which we understand a little bit more about the juveniles. One of the loggerhead populations in the Atlantic and the Pacific, and what we have found from those is that they make trans-Pacific or trans-Atlantic migrations and they will reside in developmental habitats on the other side of the ocean where they will remain for a number of years. In the case of the Atlantic, loggerheads breeding on the Carolina Coast, the Georgia Coast, the Florida Coast, all will move over towards the Azores on the other side of the Atlantic where they will grow up for a while and then they will swim back. In the Pacific we see the same thing. Stocks that are hatched in Japan are actually developing and growing off the coast of Baja and off the coast of California in that they will then migrate back to Japan. So you see right there we have a very very long distance between where these populations are actually residing and yet they would be identified as Japanese loggerheads, if we take a strict stock basis. That's the only species we can say that about. We cannot say that about any other species with certainty.

29. The other issue then becomes one of, OK, given that we don't know where these things go, how are we going to assign jurisdiction to them from a regional perspective? Now, a lot of my research over the years has focused on satellite telemetry as a methodology for understanding the movements and the habitats of the animals. I work predominantly with leatherback sea turtles and so let me bring up a few things about leatherbacks that we have determined over the last few years.

30. [See graphs 1 and 2, Appendix 1] With leatherbacks, the paradigm for understanding leatherbacks used to be that they move north and south, they nest in the tropics, they nest and then they move into the North Pacific or the North Atlantic waters where they will feed and then they will migrate back. That was based on tag returns. Tag returns data we have is the point they were tagged on this particular beach, they were recovered usually as a dead animal at some other point. It was considered pretty much a migration, point A to point B. However, when satellite telemetry came on line, and I began to use satellite telemetry to understand the movement patterns of leatherheads in particular, what we have found is that leatherbounds are not just making north-south migrations but they are likely making circum-oceanic migrations, they are making regular forays around the perimeter of the oceans. These two data sets, this upper one here was leatherbacks that were tracked out of the country of Trinidad in the Southern Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela here. I tracked three turtles, one of the transmitters was entangled in a gill net and damaged and so it failed early, the other two transmitters gave us the first perspective that leatherbacks may be doing something other than just simply making north-south migrations which is what we had from tag data. Then this animal moved up into the north Atlantic, it spent about a month and a half here and then it migrated down to the coast of Africa. This animal moved across the Atlantic up into the Bay of Biscay, then it too moved down the coast of Africa. Now, some significant issues are these two animals left within a week of each other in their northern habitats to get down to the southern habitats. Not only did these animals know where they were, they also knew what time of year it was, and where they had to get to. In Mexico this is a project which is ongoing right now, I am currently tracking leatherbacks off the Pacific Coast of Mexico. The animals have moved south here to the coast of Chile. The "El Niño" has caused some problems down here when they got into some warm water, and you can see that some of them have made divergences out away from there. What does this tell us about movements and how can I say that it is not that they are simply making north-south movements based on this.

31. Well, my hypothesis is this. Here, off the African coast at the time of year when the turtles appear, there is a tremendous amount of upwelling, that means coastal production has risen quite a bit and there is a lot of food for leatherbacks to eat. Same thing goes in these two northern habitats at the time of year they are here. Basically, what this species appears to be doing is following sources of food. They know that food is going to be prevalent down here in the early parts of the year so they migrate down to there and they are driven by that particular pattern. Here in Mexico, these animals have spent three to six months reproducing, probably feeding very little, they head for the first closest they can find where there is going to be food available. For the leatherbacks that means jellyfish. That's here at the coast of Chile and Peru. These are areas very famous for their fisheries. Where do they go from here? The hypothesis that I have proposed is that leatherbacks make this kind of migratory patterns in both the Pacific and ... [tape turnover] ... split the Pacific down the middle like this particular mapping programme doesn't allow me ship the Pacific over to centre its focus. These are the animals that we tracked south. I'm hypothesizing that they move out across the Pacific after they feed here and they come up into this northern Pacific area here and then make their way back around in a circular pattern in the Pacific. That's very much the pattern we have already documented for the Atlantic. The reason I 'm proposing that they go from here up to here is that we know in this area that the drift net fleets were catching large numbers of leatherbacks in the mid 1980s. These leatherbacks' subsequent data, genetic data, has indicated that incidentally caught leatherbacks from the Hawaiian long lined fleets here, exhibit the signature familiar with those that we would see from Mexico and Costa Rica. So therefore, these animals simply have to be getting up here somehow and this appears to be the route that they are taking.

32. Now, in the case of Malaysia and the large nesting colony down here in Irian Jaya, in Indonesia, there's also DNA evidence and a single tag return from Malaysia to "Hawaii", we haven't exactly been able to sort out what that means, but that clearly indicates that that animal moved into the north Pacific. There is DNA evidence indicating that Irian Jaya turtles from here have stranded on the California coast as well as been encountered up in this area. So I think that the hypothesis that these animals are making multi-jurisdictional migratory movements around the perimeter of the ocean to take opportunities for good feeding is very very real. Now, my point of belabouring this whole issue to you is that the only reason we knew or we are beginning to discover that these turtles were making these kind of movements is with the advent of the most recent technologies and satellite telemetry and DNA. The number of sea turtles of all species that have ever been tracked by satellite, probably numbers less than 50, with many data anything other than just a few weeks of information. Yet, we are trying to say that we can define the stocks of sea turtles based on these very few studies so that we can then address the particular threats that are perturbing these individual stocks and I am arguing that we simply do not have the data to allow for that yet. Now, there is a practicality issue and that practicality issue is: is it practical to say well, since we can't identify stocks, therefore we need to address the threats on a global level and what I argue is yes, that is exactly the situation. We know that it has been well demonstrated that turtle populations were severely damaged by shrimp trawling in at least one country of the world. That's why I think it is prudent to make the same argument that if shrimp trawling is as destructive to sea turtle populations in that country, then it is likely destructive to sea turtle populations elsewhere in the world and this is where I'm probably going to have some disagreement with my colleagues. But the bottom line is the way a shrimp trawler fleet operates perturbs the environment and if there are turtles present, and that is a significant question, if there are turtles present, I would argue that they will be drowned by shrimp fleets or shrimp fleet activities.

33. There has also been some discussion, at least in the comments I received the other day, relative to jurisdictional aspects and this falls very much within the same parameters as understanding stocks. You have to understand jurisdiction, and as I understand it, if you don't have jurisdiction, you don't have the ability to introduce this sort of regulations. I want to show you this briefly [see graph 3, Appendix 1]. Remember there is very little data on green turtle movements from Malaysia or Thailand in the case of the Pacific which is the area that I am most familiar with. There have been some satellite tracking studies and there is some DNA evidence being gathered. There is no data to indicate that green turtles have ever been recovered from Guam or the Northern Mariana Islands that I'm aware of. Maybe my colleagues would know something else. However, the fact that there is no evidence for that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist and I know that's a really strange and backwards way of approaching it, but that's simply the issue. There has not been enough research done to indicate rather there is jurisdictional overlap with these populations. I argue that there is jurisdictional overlap with leatherbacks and I think I have demonstrated that and it is being demonstrated by DNA evidence as well and there is possibly jurisdictional overlap with green turtle populations here. Twenty seven hundred kilometres is well within the range of post-nesting migrations of female green turtles for the western Pacific. So those are the issues that I wanted to point out briefly and I am sure that that'll stimulate a little bit more discussion and maybe we'll come to some consensus as to where, as a scientific community, we all fall in on this particular issue.

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