(MY) distant memory

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Sunday August 13, 2006 - The Star

 

Booming turtle tourism a distant memory for locals

 

THE excitement among villagers triggered by the sight of a nesting

leatherback turtle along the famed 13km-long Rantau Abang nesting beach in

Terengganu is a distant memory for Abdul Majid Abu Bakar, who operates the

Dahimah guesthouse nearby.

 

" They don't nest by the dozens like before. We can't depend on the turtles

for business anymore, " he lamented. He said nesting by 40 to 60 turtles in

one night were common a couple of decades ago.

 

Abdul Majid is a local villager who started the guesthouse with his

Caucasian wife called Dahimah in 1988, 1km away from the Rantau Abang Turtle

Information Centre. He benefited from the turtle-watching boom during the

nesting months between May and September every year until the mid-1990s when

the number of turtles started to decline.

 

" Every single guesthouse in the area was fully-booked throughout the season.

Some had to sleep in their tour buses while waiting to catch a glimpse of

the leatherback laying eggs.

 

" Then everything went quiet. Nesting became scarce and the tourists stopped

coming. At the same time, we heard of turtles drowning in the sea. Fishing

boats with trawl nets were creating havoc, " he recalled.

 

Abdul Majid, 47, blamed the lack of action from the authorities for the

imminent extinction of the leatherbacks.

 

" Why was there no action against the trawlers? The Department of Fisheries

is empowered to confiscate, destroy and prosecute those that violate the

rules on using banned fishing gear. It should be held accountable for what

has happened to these turtles, " he said.

 

He also wondered what happened to the half-million hatchlings released over

the past decades.

 

" Were they also caught in those nets? " he asked.

 

However, he refused to accept that the long tradition of egg consumption

among locals was a contributing factor to the turtle's imminent extinction.

 

 

The turtles are still nesting in Sabah and Indonesia even though the eggs

there have been commercially exploited extensively. He said that while

leatherback eggs were consumed, until the practice was banned in 1987, the

nesting rate remained high.

 

Turtle expert Prof Dr Chan Eng Heng explained that while Abdul Majid's

observation was true the impact from long-term egg consumption would only be

felt when the " gap " left by the dead turtles was not filled by a new

generation hatched from the eggs laid some 20 years ago; hence, the sudden

crash in the Rantau Abang population in the mid-1990s.

 

" There can be total consumption of the eggs for 20 years and everything

seems all right until the adult population begins to die due to natural or

human-induced causes. That's when the effect becomes tangible, " she added.

 

 

 

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Living dead of Rantau Abang - The Star

 

BY HILARY CHIEW

 

THE living dead – that is the acceptable way to describe the leatherback

turtles in Rantau Abang, Terengganu, for now.

 

In conservation terminology, a population that has dwindled to the point of

being incapable of regeneration is essentially living out its final years.

This is characterised by continual reproductive activities of the few

remaining adult animals. Hence, the term the " living dead " .

 

The newest round of dispute over the state of the leatherback turtles arose

from a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) declaration that the

beleaguered leatherback of Terengganu was " effectively extinct " which was

met with an immediate rebuttal from the Turtle and Marine Ecosystem Centre

(Tumec) – the national agency mandated to save the turtle – that the turtles

were still laying eggs and technically not extinct yet.

 

To date, there have been five nestings by two leatherback turtles documented

this season on the beaches of Dungun, Terengganu. Their exact locations are

being kept secret.

 

While agreeing that the population of leatherback turtles, which nest in a

few beaches in the world, is on the decline, Tumec director Kamaruddin

Ibrahim insisted that it was not extinct but merely critically-endangered.

 

" I follow the IUCN (World Conservation Union) definition.

Critically-endangered is one category before extinction, " he said.

 

It may be a case of semantics perhaps, but the fact remains that the

majestic leatherback nestings that spawned a turtle-watching tourism

industry from the 1960s right up to the 1980s will go down as a sad chapter

in the nation's environmental history.

 

In Rantau Abang, the statistics reveal the tragic fact that nestings have

dwindled from the thousands in the 1960s to a meagre average of 30 per

season since 2000; a drastic 90% reduction in around two decades.

 

The eggs laid since 2001 did not produce any hatchlings because they were

not fertilised by a male turtle. Scientists predict that for every one

thousand hatchlings produced, only one will reach adulthood to sustain the

population.

 

However, Kamaruddin and his staff in Tumec are not prepared to give up. This

season, the team has divided all five nests recovered so far into three

clutches: two clutches are being incubated in two separate hatcheries and

one clutch is buried in the beach.

 

Turtle scientist Prof Dr Chan Eng Heng of the University College of Science

and Technology Malaysia (Kustem) cautioned that the effectiveness of

captive-breeding and augmenting projects that were implemented elsewhere is

questionable. Many scientists have criticised such projects as a waste of

public funds.

 

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Two recent reports noted extinction of leatherbacks - The Star

 

IT IS not one but two recent reports that noted the extinction of the

leatherback turtles in Malaysia.

 

Besides the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report titled

*Assessment

of the Conservation Status of the Leatherback Turtle in the Indian Ocean and

Southeast Asia* which forms the first species assessment report of the

Indian Ocean and South-East Asia (IOSEA) Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)

on the Conservation and Management of Marine Turtles, another report on the

state of the sea turtle also dedicated its inaugural report to the majestic

leatherback. (Malaysia has yet to sign the IOSEA MoU.)

 

It is no coincidence that the reports focused on the leatherback simply

because the largest marine turtle had undergone dramatic decline.

 

Meanwhile, the State of the World's Sea Turtles, a global project of the

World Conservation Union's Marine Turtle Specialist Group, noted that the

Malaysian leatherback population – a possible third Indo-Pacific stock –

" may be almost extinct " .

 

Sources: www.seaturtlestatus. org and www.ioseaturtles.org

 

 

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Uphill task against human predators - The Star

 

IT APPEARS that people's appetite for turtle eggs knows no limits.

 

In spite of the leatherback turtle being on the verge of extinction, the

eggs from the last few remaining nests are still being coveted. The eggs are

not even safe in the hatcheries.

 

As a counter-measure against poaching, the Turtle and Marine Ecosystem

Centre (Tumec) director Kamaruddin Ibrahim has resorted to splitting up this

season's five nests into several clutches of eggs. Some clutches are placed

in styrofoam boxes in the temperature-controlled hatchery and some are

reburied in the beach.

 

" Besides hoping that this would increase the hatching rate, it is also a way

of ensuring that we don't lose everything to poachers, " he said, stressing

the need to keep the location of the incubating eggs secret and having decoy

nests even in the hatchery.

 

A survey in Pasar Payang, Kuala Terengganu, the site of numerous complaints

on the sale of smuggled turtle eggs showed that it is business as usual.

 

Bags of fresh and preserved green turtle eggs purportedly from Sabah are

being sold along with local eggs from the nesting beach where collection is

not banned. (The state declared the major nesting beaches in Pulau Redang as

sanctuaries in 2004, effectively stopping the commercial exploitation of

eggs there.)

 

However, as only leatherback egg consumption has been outlawed in

Terengganu, the traders are selling eggs of green turtles openly.

 

" It is illegal to eat turtle eggs in Sabah, so the eggs are sent to

Terengganu. This has been going on for at least five years, " said a vendor

in Kuala Terengganu.

 

Eggs are preserved in salt water and are generally sold in a bag of five for

RM10 while a bag of 10 fresh eggs are priced between RM16 and RM17.