FEATURE - Honduran town fights to save leatherback turtles
Date: 17-May-02
Country: HONDURAS
Author: Daniel LeClair
The giant leatherback turtle takes an hour and a half to lumber up the sand to the spot where she will lay around 60 eggs in 50 minutes.
But if local turtle patrols don't find her nest soon and take the eggs to an incubator, they could be snatched by snakes, large birds or poachers.
Experts say the leatherback turtle, which has survived more than 50 million years in its current form, is now in danger of extinction.
The number of breeding females living today has dropped to just 30,000 from around 115,000 in the 1980s, according to some scientific estimates.
The leatherback can live more than 50 years and inhabits the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, with nesting sites from southern Mexico to Costa Rica on the Pacific side, throughout the Caribbean, and on the coast of Africa.
On the Atlantic coast of this Central American nation, the community of Plaplaya has taken action to stop poachers stealing the turtles' eggs, which sell for one lempira (6 cents) each on the local market and are seen as a tasty delicacy.
About 100 men from this community of 800 people patrol 7.5 miles (12 km) of beach at night between February and August, looking for turtles laying eggs, or for eggs recently buried in the sand.
They pick up the eggs - 60 to 80 in each nest - and take them to an incubator where they are kept for two or three months, until they hatch.
The baby turtles are then taken to the sea to be set free.
"Forty years ago you saw many of those turtles laying eggs here. Now only a few come," said Jesus Garcia, 80, a local resident of Plaplaya, where Misquito Indians and Hondurans of African descent make up most of the population.
AGED WANDERER
The turtles eggs are threatened by urban development in nesting zones. Commercial fishing is also an enemy of the leatherback, and many are believed to die every year from eating plastic waste in the ocean.
The leatherback, which can grow to 8 feet (2.4 metres) and weigh 1,500 lbs (700 kg) or more, is the speediest sea turtle and can dive to depths of up to 4,000 feet (1,200 meters).
Feeding on jellyfish, the creature is something of a traveler and has been found more than 3,000 miles (5,000 km) from the beach it was born on.
The females nest every two to four years. The number of egg-laying turtles has declined drastically at well-known nesting sites on the Costa Rican Pacific, but some Caribbean island spots have recently observed a resurgence in nesting turtles.
In their own battle to save the leatherback, the Plaplaya night patrols aim to rescue eggs before predators find them.
"We began this work because we noticed fewer turtles were coming to lay eggs here. If predators take the eggs, that is surely part of that trend," project director Carlos Molinero told Reuters.
An estimated 100 giant leatherbacks nest in Plaplaya, and a further 100 in other beaches on the Atlantic coast of Honduras.
FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL
During the nesting process, people from the patrol inspect the turtle for wounds, mutations and tags and measure her.
After laying her eggs, she buries them roughly, pushing sand with her back feet, and then returns to the sea.
She is only on land for about 2 hours during her infrequent nesting excursions. Males never go on land after they are born and spend their entire life at sea.
The turtle's female offspring will not reach reproductive age for 15 to 30 years, and if they survive that long, they will probably come back to this same beach or one close by to lay their own eggs.
"With that kind of a reproductive cycle, along with predators who eat their eggs, commercial fishing and construction in egg-laying areas, it's logical that the species is in danger of extinction," said Marco Lopez, a biologist who works on the local turtle protection project.
Plaplaya's efforts to protect turtles began in 1995 and the walls of the local primary school are painted with turtle murals.
"We are pushing a complete project.
