Chairman

34. Thank you very much Dr. Eckert. In continuing the round, I don't know whether Dr. Frazier wishes to jump in on this question of the population stocks which we have now got into or whether you would like to come back a little bit later on to talk perhaps about the Titanic and the deckchairs at a later stage. Otherwise, I could go to one of the other experts who also flag this subject and hear perhaps a slightly different perspective on the issue we have just been discussing.

Dr. Frazier

35. I think what I am hearing is people speaking to the same issue, but using different ways to get to it. A concern which Dr. Eckert mentions about no information is not negative information, is fundamental to science and this same concern is well expressed in the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. If you don't know something, there is not a reason not to protect it. I think that is a very simple issue. To fine tune, to describe in more detail what a breeding stock is, and where it lives, and what countries have rights to it will take us many years, and I think all parties here would agree that when they're on the high seas, then they are common resources to the world community, not in anyone's jurisdiction, but in fact in everyone's jurisdiction. I think the complication here is at different levels, it is political and it's biological.

Chairman

36. Thank you. Dr. Guinea you certainly mentioned the breeding units and perhaps you would like to go on with that.

Mr. Guinea

37. Yes, thank you Mr. Chairman. The fundamental unit of conservation is the breeding unit from my perspective. We measure the populations of sea turtles by the number of nesting females. Very few studies have produced estimates of population size from other than nesting females. A few feeding ground studies in limited areas will usually present densities or a biomass per hectare or square kilometre, but the unit of population size is traditionally the number of females that nest in a particular year or because of some species having high fluctuations from year to year in their nesting populations maybe over a number of years, a decade or even longer to get an indication of the yearly fluctuations in population size and also population fluctuations associated with cyclical events such as the "El Niño" or the southern oscillation event.

38. So the breeding unit is what we measure. We measure the number of females on a particular breeding beach, or in a particular locality, whether it's one island or several islands and that becomes the unit. I should say that a lot of work has been done with tagging sea turtles. There are large numbers of sea turtles carrying tags around the oceans of the world. Dr. Eckert has indicated new technologies that have come onto line. These include mitochondrial DNA studies whereby the maternal lineage is determined for a nesting population, which indicates that because the mitochondria are not carried in the sperm and are not transferred to the ovum, therefore each individual carries the mitochondria from its mother and therefore, because of the characteristics of that mitochondria, the DNA finger print can be established for a breeding unit. It might be one island. It might be several islands. Sea turtles will move either on a yearly basis, in some areas. In some areas, they may even move on a nightly basis between islands, if one island isn't particularly satisfactory. So, the tagging studies are some of the most basic studies of sea turtles. Mitochondrial DNA studies support tagging studies. If mitochondrial DNA studies were in conflict with tagging studies, then they would not have progressed, regardless of the theory associated with them. Latest technology, looking at satellite telemetry. Again, if satellite telemetry did not agree with tagging studies and mitochondrial studies, it wouldn't be accepted and this, as Dr. Eckert has indicated, is a new technology. There are probably fewer than 50 sea turtles carrying satellite tags as he mentioned. There are also other means of looking at the migratory routes of sea turtles. A thing such as temperature depth datalogue is attached to sea turtles, whereby the depth to which they dive, the temperature of the waters through which they move. This information can be carried with the turtle and when it returns to its feeding ground or nesting beach, then a map can be produced of where the turtle actually went or at least the limitations of where the turtle has been during its nesting migrations.

39. In Australia, the breeding units of turtles that are involved with shrimp trawls. I should also point out that the leatherback sea turtle is not a species that is negatively impacted by shrimp trawling, but the loggerhead populations in Australia are nominated as being affected by shrimp trawling as are the Australian flatback sea turtles. These turtles do move from feeding grounds to breeding grounds and back to feeding grounds on a regular basis. With work in Queensland, where turtles are being satellite tagged as well as using depth-temperature dataloggers as well as using mitochondrial DNA as well as using physical tags, turtles can be monitored throughout the year. The laparoscopic investigation, this is internal investigation, can determine when they are about to breed and almost the day when the turtle leaves its feeding ground can be nominated. It can be tracked to its nesting ground. Researchers find her on the nesting beach. The number of nesting events can be recorded and then the turtle can be tracked back to its feeding ground again. So, with some populations, you can define where most of the population is residing. Admittedly there are some populations, some loggerheads, that will move to New Caledonia from Queensland, for either feeding or breeding. Loggerhead turtles that feed on the southern Great Barrier Reef are known to migrate to New Caledonia to breed and then return at the end of the breeding season to exactly the same reef on the southern Great Barrier Reef. Similarly, sea turtles found feeding in New Caledonia move into Queensland for nesting.

40. So, the concept of breeding units can be established. I think we have a number of countries in very close proximity to each other. If you are looking at the turtles or the species that are involved with shrimp trawling. And we could nominate those as being loggerheads, the Australian flatback is not one of those listed in the dispute, the olive ridley sea turtle, also the hawksbill turtle and the green turtle to some extent. Their movements are fairly well known for some countries. Just because we don't know the movement of every turtle from a population in every country, there is no reason to say that we should disregard the idea of breeding units. The breeding unit is the only tool we have to say whether our numbers are increasing or decreasing and because of that I would stress again the need to use the paradigm of a breeding unit as a conservation unit and this is very important for those species that are affected by shrimp trawling.

Mr. Liew

41. Thank you again. [referring to graph 4, Appendix 2] There are two things when you talk about movements of turtles. One is the hatchling - that means those that have just emerged from the nest - so they also will move in the oceans and hatchlings are oceanic. That means that once they have emerged from the nest they will run straight into the sea and they will swim offshore and the prevailing currents will then carry them. And some of them, we don't know how many, will be carried into the ocean and they will circulate the ocean. So, for example if they are hatchlings that come from Terengganu in Malaysia, currents will then carry them and if the currents are flushing up and down [indicating the South China Sea] then they will follow the currents and be flushed up and down. Some of the hatchlings will make their way to the open oceans and promptly they will be carried into the open ocean. But you must remember, the hatchlings are very small, they are pelagic, they will remain very near the surface and they will be moving around and probably going a few times [around the Pacific Ocean gyres], we don't know. And for 5 [to] 7 years or even more until they grow up to a size of about a dinner plate. So during this period, they are more or less dispersed, this is the dispersion phase which most scientists agree to, but you must remember that during this phase they are really pelagic, shrimp trawlers are of no threat to them.

42. So even though you find juveniles coming here [pointing at the Californian/Mexican coast, graph 5, Appendix 2] they are still pelagic, there is very little chance that they get caught in shrimp trawlers. But they may be caught in gill nets, drift nets and so on. So, if you are talking about the loggerheads that nest here [pointing at Japan], the juveniles occur here [pointing at the Californian/Mexican coast] but eventually, when they decide to settle into their feeding grounds, they probably will try to make their way back to somewhere nearer this location [pointing at the coast off China]. So that is the pelagic phase. So, once they have completed the pelagic phase, they would then try to settle, especially for the loggerheads, the greens, the hawksbills and olive ridleys, they would settle and have already benthic habitat, that means they remain feeding close to the sea floor. That is the time when shrimp trawlers will impact them. But usually, by that time they would be settling closer to where the nesting grounds are. You are talking about a distance of nearly 10,000 km [referring to the distance across the Pacific Ocean], so that is why in general you find feeding grounds and nesting grounds to be in a close region, not feeding grounds here [pointing at the Californian/Mexican coast] and then nesting grounds there [pointing at Japan]. So, like the breeding unit in Hawaii, you will find that they will probably be feeding in the region along that area [indicating the region around Hawaii]. The breeding unit of loggerheads in Japan will be feeding around there. The adults will be feeding around there and, in fact, satellite telemetry studies by the Fisheries Department in Japan have found that their loggerheads move to the coast of China to feed and there is where the feeding grounds are, not here [pointing at the Californian/Mexican coast].

43. Similarly for Australia, feeding grounds are around there [indicating the northeastern Australian region] and for this part and there [indicating the northwestern Australian region] for that region. It is very unlikely for turtles nesting here [pointing at the eastern Australian coast] to be feeding there [pointing at the northwestern Australian region]. To add to this point, I think that Mr. Guinea has already mentioned that Colin Limpus, in Australia, has made studies using laparoscopy to look at the abdominal cavity of female adults in their feeding grounds. And by looking, using the tube and a light they could see what is inside the abdominal cavity. And they found green turtles when they are feeding, the abdominal cavity is filled with food because they feed on sea grass and all that. And when they found that the females are about to breed, that means, about to make their migration to the nesting ground, the big follicles would have already formed and they would take quite a large amount of area in the abdominal cavity and there is very little food left in the gut. So, which means for a female to make their migration to the nesting ground, they will have to accumulate a lot of energy stores in their fat. So that is why you find turtles spending 3, 4 or 5 years before they will make their migration to breed, because they need to gather up enough or sufficient energy stores to make the migration.

44. So, in our work in Terrenganu, we have been tagging turtles for quite a number of years and every turtle that comes to the beach, we tag them, so we will know when the turtle first nests until the last day that she nests. So we will know exactly when was the first day she nested until the very last day. And some of them have nested 10 times. And every time there is a nesting interval of about 10 days, so you are talking about 100 days interval at the nesting ground. We have also satellite-tracked these turtles, the very same turtles, back to their feeding grounds. They would swim straight across the open ocean, they don't stop to feed and they would swim something like almost a month continuously before they reside back at their feeding ground. So you are talking about a turtle when they are ready to breed they will have to swim from their feeding ground, taking them one month, to their nesting ground. At the nesting ground they don't feed because the abdominal cavity is all full with eggs. There is no way they can feed and we have observed turtles, we have put ultra-sonic tags, we follow them, see what they do, we dive and observe what they are doing and most of the time the green turtles will be just sitting at the bottom and then waiting for the next nesting. They don't feed. So you are talking about 1 month to travel there and spending at least 2 months at the nesting site and then another month to go back to their feeding ground. So something like about 4 months without feeding. So, if you are talking about a loggerhead that is feeding here [pointing at the Californian/Mexican coast] and travelling 10,000 km to nest there [pointing at Japan] and then having to travel another 10,000 km to go back, it is very unlikely. So whatever loggerheads that are found here [pointingat the Californian Mexican coast] are probably just the pelagic phase and they will try to move back to areas very close to the nesting ground, because if you are talking about swimming 10,000 km, the swim itself will take at least 5 to 6 months without feeding and loggerheads, we are talking about loggerheads in the open Pacific Ocean, it is not very likely.

45. Sometimes you may find strays that may not make it back to the west [referring to the Western Pacific]. Those strays will probably not be able to nest because it is just too distant. So, that is why I would say, if you are talking about breeding units, they will be quite isolated. There is a certain range. You cannot talk about breeding unit as here to there [pointing from the Californian coast to Western Pacific]. You're not talking about that kind of range - you are talking about this kind of a range [indicating the regional areas as marked], beyond that I think it would be very hard for them to survive. Now, coming back to Scott Eckert's leatherbacks, where he tracked them going south and he hypothesized that they would go across to here [pointing at the West Pacific] and come here [pointing at the Northern East Pacific]. Well, there is also another hypothesis. They could go from here directly to there. The numbers they could track is how many? 5, 10? Out of a total population of [Dr. Eckert's answer not audible]. OK, right, so I mean, I was thinking some of them may go south, some of them may go north, I don't know. But, going round the Pacific Ocean is just a hypothesis and yet to be proven. Perhaps it may be so, if he considers that all of them go south. But then we have also to remember the leatherbacks that are going in this Ocean are in very deep waters, totally not affected by shrimp trawling. Only high seas drift nets or gill nets or long lines will catch them. Trawling in Malaysia will not catch their turtles.

Chairman

46. Thank you. That brings us back to Dr. Poiner.

Dr. Poiner

47. Thanks Mr. Chairman. I'd like to raise two issues. I too think it is critically important that you focus on a breeding unit when deliberating and deciding on management measures. I also think it is very important that we are careful in not assuming that the process operating for one species of turtle will be the same process as operating for all species of turtle and I think the contrast from the information available for leatherbacks versus, say green turtles in and around the West Pacific is a good example to show that there are differences and I think there should be a great deal of care. Similarly, I think there should be a great deal of care in interpreting the impacts of fishing on different species in different areas. So, for example, Dr. Eckert mentioned that there is clear evidence that the US shrimp fisheries have had an impact on several species and I agree that there is clear evidence. But I also think, in determining the impact of a fishery on a breeding unit or globally, whatever perspective you take, you need to remember really that in making that assessment, the first thing you do is measure the catch rate of the turtles, in this case of the turtle species, and catch rates are usually relatively low in the sense that the number of turtles captured per number of trawls. Then you need to multiply that figure by the total effort, how much trawling in the overall fishery, to get a total number of individuals that are caught and then you need to make an assessment of what is the impact of that total number at whatever size on the population.

48. Now, fisheries vary tremendously and I think that the shrimp fisheries vary tremendously around the world in terms of the nature, distribution and level of effort. So, for example, where the incidental capture rate has been measured, and that has been in the southern US fisheries and the Australian fisheries, there is very little difference in terms of the catch rate, i.e. the number of times a shrimp trawl actually captures, say, a loggerhead turtle. However there is a significant difference in terms of the effort in the two fisheries. So, for example in the east coast Australian fishery and the Northern Australian fishery, the effort levels are much lower than in the Gulf of Mexico fisheries. Hence, the total number captured will be much less. So then you need to make an assessment of what is the level of impact. Now, I must make it clear I'm not arguing that in saying those Australian fisheries that shrimp trawling is not a significant source of mortality, but you would need to be very careful in arguing that just because you demonstrate, in this case, that the impact of fishing in the Southern Gulf, in the Gulf of Mexico in the other US fisheries has had an impact on species is the major source of mortality anthropogenic on species of turtles there. You have got to be very careful in making that assumption that therefore it will be the major source of mortality in other areas. So, for example, especially as we know in those other areas, there has been and continues to be significant source of mortality, be it direct harvest or be it egg harvests.

Chairman

49. Some new points have come out. Do the experts want to carry on and take those up? Or, Dr. Eckert, you are looking thoughtful.

Dr. Eckert

50. Yes, I guess I'm in a position to decide if we want to argue specific points or if I should try to back up a little bit, and think in terms of the overall thesis. I guess maybe what I can do is illustrate this issue a little bit with an example. One of Liew's comments relative to the loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and its distribution around the ocean basins is interesting. Off the coast of Mexico, where these animals are in their developmental habitat, Mexican shrimpers are indeed catching juvenile loggerheads and what I am trying to point out with continually revisiting this point that we need to be aware of the entire stock range of these species when we are trying to apply conservation, is that in situations like that, where the developmental habitats may occur in other countries' jurisdictions, you may see it in a distant country's nesting population. A case in point for that is on the US Atlantic coast, we have two distinct genetic loggerhead populations, those that nest in the Carolina and Georgia and those that nest in Florida. The Florida population appears relatively stable whereas the Carolina population and the Georgia population have declined very significantly. It appears that one of the reasons for that is that the juveniles of those populations forage in two different locations. The juveniles from the Carolina and Georgia forage in Carolina and Georgia and a little bit down in to Florida in shipping areas, whereas those that are coming from the Florida population are foraging out of the Bahamas where there is no shipping. And this has defined why there has been two very different reflections on the nesting beaches. So, my point, that I want to stress over again, is that we need to understand those particular stock issues before going to try to manage stocks on regional basis. One of the arguments that was put forth in some documentation that we received is that the Malaysian green turtle populations nesting in the Turtle Islands are recovering and therefore shrimping is not having an impact on those populations. Well, we have now heard quite a bit of documentation that green turtles do not forage where they necessarily feed and what probably hasn't been pointed out is that often, it isn't the nesting females that are impacted by fisheries, but rather the juveniles and the foraging females. Part of that comes from the way that these animals behave. As Liew pointed out, reproductive females, with the exception of the leatherback, do not feed during the nesting season and they tend to just hang out on the bottom often that will be in hard bottom areas where they are more secure. There has been some work done on diving behaviour in hawksbills and tracking work with hawksbills and green turtles that seemed to indicate that. And so, in the case of that particular argument - the fact that the population may be going up, indicates that it is not being impacted by shrimp fishing in the Turtle Islands - doesn't stand up. What you need to be looking at in that case is what are the juvenile populations and the resident female populations and resident mature populations, what is happening to them on their natal grounds. Again we have to get back to understanding what these stocks are, where these stocks go and before we are going to properly be able to talk in terms of stock management and that is simply my point.

Chairman

51. Dr. Frazier, do you have any further comments at this stage?

Dr. Frazier

52. I guess, briefly I basically am in agreement with both sides of the argument. I think that we are trying to fine tune a complex issue. I think we are all in agreement that we need to manage a stock, the question is what is that stock? and where does that stock reside. In the case of Australia, there are many years of studies; in the case of the US there are many years of studies and there is a reasonably good idea of where stocks go. In most cases, we don't have that information. That takes us to this problem of no information is not negative information. The description that Liew gave distinguishing what leatherbacks do and what the hard-shelled turtles do, I find correct. The problem is: where can we actually say we know a stock well enough to be able to say all of the different means of protecting that stock throughout decades of maturity, of the animal developing to maturity, and then decades of living after that to its full reproductive potential? In most cases I don't believe we have that information. I agree that we must prioritize conservation activities, I am not convinced that we should have an either/or approach and look for the major, the most important and only do that. Sea turtle conservation strategies for decades have tried to impress upon the need for integrated activities, I think all the people here have argued that you need to protect eggs and you need to protect turtles in the oceans. Doing one and not the other is not enough. I am a bit confused as to why sometimes, some of the submissions seem to focus on the most important, I don't think that's the argument. I think the argument is integrating conservation, so that it takes into account all the distinct aspects of this very complicated animal. And in that respect we then come into what are the pragmatic ways to address some of those threats. And that then becomes a more political issue, that's outside the hands of biologists. In conservation biology, what we look for often are ways for users to pay for the way they are exploiting resources. There is a concept there of user pays.

53. Now on trade issues, this is not my training, but in trade issues I would say that that means incorporating the externalities into the cost of the product. So that the consumer then pays for the product. So that the product is both environmentally and socially acceptable to the producer. That's simply my way of seeing things, I don't see contention here, I see that we are viewing, I think Buddha made a statement once that three blind men describing an elephant would describe it in different terms. One a column, one a large wall and the other a fan and I certainly don't consider myself an expert, I am specialist, but I have great deal to learn about turtles although I spent 30 years learning about them. So I think we are probing here, there is something extremely complex that we are trying to grapple with, which is a great challenge to conserve.

Chairman

54. Thank you very much. Dr. Guinea, I think just to take that on a little bit. Dr. Poiner mentioned earlier that he thought we should be talking about the likelihood of recovery using different management tools. I am not sure whether those who were advocating the integrated approach mean we should use management tools all the time, or whether we should sort of try and prioritize it or identify different tools for different populations. I wonder if perhaps you could develop it a little further because I think in your original written proposals you talked about the importance of having nationally developed conservation programmes with a national flavour and I think that perhaps in that context it would be useful to hear whether you could develop the points a little bit more.

Mr. Guinea

55. Yes, in my original submission I was talking about countries developing ownerships of technologies and using technology appropriate to that country. This is part of the concept of responsible fishing. The individual countries have an idea of the resources they are taking from the sea, they know what is marketable, they know where the profit lies, whether the profit is in shrimp, whether the profit is in small fish, so in fact whether the bycatchers are one of the components of the profitability of the fishery. In that regard, the countries know what the target species are. By importing technologies, something that works in the USA or Australia or works in the other country that may be imposing a technology, the ownership of that technology stays with the exporting country until the receiving country has modified it to the fishery - modified it to their existing social, cultural and financial arrangements. This modification process gives the country an ownership and this also builds up a concept of, rather than importing something that is good for conservation of the species that is in our waters, this is now something that we are doing, we have modified a technology for our present conditions. This may involve a modification to the design, a change in the net. I was very impressed when I saw the Thai Turtle-Free Device. It didn't resemble the Georgia Jumpers or the USA TEDs on which probably it had its origins and it was something that was definitely Thai looking. It had an elegance that you could associate with Thai and the Thai people. The technologists that demonstrated it showed it with a national pride. This was our TED. We have a similar situation in Australia where we have the AusTED and our AusTED doesn't resemble a number of TEDs that you can commercially buy from America, but our AusTED is flexible. So it is not a rigid TED, it is not a soft TED, it is a flexible TED made of plastic coated stainless steel cables. It has cross members which are different to other TED designs. and trials in Australian waters have indicated that the fishing fleet are happy with it. Although more refinement, more experimentation is required, there is a general feeling that, yes, this is something that we have developed, that has come from CSIRO, has come from various fishing organizations. ... [end of tape]

Dr. Poiner

56. ... the issue I was raising is in terms of the way you will introduce a bycatch reduction device, call it TED or whatever, and how you use that tool in fishery. You can do it in different ways. One way is to do a certification approach, that has been used and then you focus a lot on certifying reperformance of that device. The other you take, is an agreement on specific targets and then let the industry or whoever develop ways of meeting those targets and then you focus on monitoring of performance and reaching that target rather than certification. In different fisheries and different conditions we will use those different approaches.

Chairman

57. Thank you very much. Dr. Frazier would you like to continue on that one?

Dr. Frazier

58. I think the lessons to be learned from the Australian fisheries are profound. The Australian fisheries are what are called "closed entry". There is a limited number of vessels which can go and shrimp. Unfortunately that model of managing fisheries is not common. If other countries could have done what Australia has done, we would all be much better off today. The people responsible for developing TEDs in the US had originally planned on voluntary compliance, and there was a long period of trying to make that work. The fishery is over-capitalized, there are too many people fishing, as in many countries, as in most countries, and in the end the only way to make it work, was through certification - was to go the other road. That was not the original intention, in terms of what I understand, although perhaps Dr. Eckert who has worked in that area more than I have, could clarify - my understanding was the original intention was voluntary compliance. But because it is an open-entry fishery, it means it is a free-for-all. And therefore, it is not only a national sense of ownership, it is more of a personal sense of responsibility toward the fishery. This is what we lack on a world basis now. With a few exceptions, and Australia is one of those exceptions.

Chairman

59. There are others, are there?

Dr. Eckert

60. New Zealand.

Dr. Frazier

61. Well, the ITQs [individual transferable quotas] are not working there, I don't think.

Dr. Poiner

62. One comment: limited entry does not necessarily equate to reduced effort, I think that should be the point. It just means limited entry is used often to either manage over-capitalization rather than effort-reductions. So for example, one example I am very familiar with in the Australian Northern Prawn Fishery where a halving in the number of participants does not mean a halving of the effort. And the effort for a variety of reasons is now approaching the same levels with half that number of participants. So you should be very careful in that. Because you get into issues of efficiency of the fleet. The argument I was raising here was that I think the important issue when dealing with the management of fisheries, be it the management of the stock being targeted or the management of the impact of those fisheries, you need to be very careful and you need to be very clear in terms of the nature of the fishery and what the management objectives of that fishery are.

Chairman

63. On the same point, Dr. Eckert.

Dr. Eckert

64. Just a brief comment. My understanding, and I can be corrected by my Australian colleagues, but the Australian fishery is sociologically quite different from what we saw in the United States. In the United States shrimp fishermen are generally independent owner-operators. I was in the south-east during a lot of this bru-ha-ha, so I understand a lot of what went on in the application of TEDs, and one of the great problems that occurred there was that these independent operators-owners do not have an umbrella spokesperson or any kind of an organization under which they work cooperatively. So when approaches were made to them to voluntarily adopt things, you basically had to go to each boat, to each owner, to each little parish in Louisiana, and say "will you please use TEDs and here's why." From an environmental education perspective, which is often a good way of introducing these sorts of issues, because it has been my experience that shrimp fishermen care more about the environment that they are working in, than just about any people I know. They are very sensitive to what is going on out there. But you need to introduce the issue of turtles to them. The reason it was such a dismal failure in the United States was simply that it was too big a task. In Australia, it is a relatively young fishery, it appears that they have tremendous cooperation, government to industry and industry as an industry, instead of a bunch of individual guys out there fishing. So, when you talk about the approaches that transpired into actually introducing TEDs or BRDs (bycatch reduction devices) into the fleet, it has been a much more pleasant task, and this is why Australia can talk in terms of voluntary, probably getting good cooperation on voluntary introduction, whereas in the United States, despite very valiant attempts, it was an absolute failure. It is also one of the reasons why the application of TED regulations in the United States was so slow in coming. There has often been discussion that application of TEDs took 10 or 15 years in the United States. Well, this is often why. They went down a lot of blind-ends before they finally found the scenario that worked. And I would have to say that that has only been at most 5 years, it really hasn't been that long before an effective way of getting TEDs put into place has occurred.

Chairman

65. Thank you. I am sorry Dr. Liew, I have kept you waiting a long time. You have got some new subjects to raise.

Mr. Liew

66. Before that, I just want to ask a question. Should not the voluntary option be given first, before you force somebody? Should not the fishermen or the country be given the voluntary option?

67. I would just raise some points that I have noticed in some of the other experts' deliberations. This is about protecting eggs or adults and about using reproductive values to say that it is more important to protect adults than to protect the eggs. A healthy population needs individuals in all stages of development, not just eggs or just the adults. It would be detrimental to turtle populations to say that we should protect the adults and allow rampant egg harvest to continue in countries, especially when commercial egg harvest is still a very major threat. We need to learn from the Malaysian leatherback situation, the Sarawak green turtle experience, we need to learn from them. Where they have failed to protect the eggs in the early stages, and the population is now in decline. In the US egg harvest is now probably not a problem, but mortality in adults or mortality of adults in shrimp trawl is. So, to conserve their turtles, they need to convince the public that the adults must be protected, because their eggs are already well-protected. They must now convince properly their public that adults must be protected because they have a high reproductive value. Some of the experts cite the work of Crouse that the reproductive value of an egg is 1, and the reproductive value of a breeding adult would be 584. I would like to note that the unit that is used here is in numbers, 1 egg to 584 for the female or breeding adult. Can we use numbers to equate an egg to an adult? In ecological modelling, we have to standardize the unit and we have to standardize in energy units or in biomass, biomass means in weight. So a turtle egg only weighs about 40 grammes, while a young adult female will weigh 60 kg, which is about 1,500 times the biomass of an egg. So when we standardize reproductive value in terms of biomass, not in terms of numbers, then the reproductive value of an egg is 1 and that of a young adult is 0.4. So using reproductive values is just how you interpret it, but I feel we should interpret in terms of biomass rather than in numbers because we cannot equate an egg that small, with an adult. It is true that the mortality of adults has a very instantaneous impact on the status of a population. Almost immediately you will be able to see the decline of the number of nestings. But the impact on eggs or hatchling mortality will not be obvious until decades later, many years later. By that time it will be too late to take remedial action because the population has virtually collapsed. That's what has happened to the leatherbacks in Malaysia, and [green turtles] in Sarawak. It is like a case of trying to determine which virus is more deadly, the Ebola virus or the AIDS virus. The Ebola virus is a very contagious virus, spreads very rapidly and it kills in a matter of days. But because of that you are able to identify it, isolate it and then take action. The AIDS virus, and its transmission is more discreet, it will take many, many years before you detect it. By that time millions of people are infected. You have to be very careful when you talk about protecting adults or protecting eggs. I think both have to be handled with equal priority. Not just one.

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