The Star Online
Tuesday May 8,
2012
It is too late to avert the decline of Malaysian
leatherbacks but there is still hope for the three remaining turtle species.
IN RETROSPECT, it is easy to see how the wheels of
the Malaysian leatherback turtle’s rapid decline were set in motion long before
anyone truly understood the gravity of what was happening.
Once a prime attraction of Malaysia’s burgeoning
tourism industry in the 1970s and 80s, leatherback turtle numbers have since
declined so much that some scientists say the species has become virtually
extinct locally. The species is critically endangered the world over but in
Malaysia, the situation is more dire than most.
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) marine
biologist Juanita Joseph has dedicated the last decade or so to researching
Malaysian turtles, and as much as she would like to believe there is hope, she
does not think Malaysian leatherbacks are going to recover.
The living dead: The leatherback is virtually extinct in Malaysia but
fortunately, can still be found in other parts of the world, including Costa
Rica.
“This is because (most)
sea turtles only return to breed at their natal beach. They may travel
thousands of miles to reach foraging grounds, crossing transnational borders,
but all turtles return to the area where they were born to breed and nest.”
The implication of this
is that once the local population of breeding turtles has disappeared, it is
gone forever. But convincing locals of this is not easy. There is a common
misconception that should turtles disappear from our beach, more can always
be brought back from elsewhere.
It took hard data to
convince the Terengganu state government, once one of the world’s most
significant leatherback hosts, of the need to ban leatherback turtle egg
consumption. And eventually, data from studies on population genetics also
led to the gazettement of important nesting grounds for a number of other
endangered turtle species found in Malaysia.
Communicating the
situation’s urgency however, especially to the older generations of states
like Kelantan and Terengganu, where turtle eggs have been consumed as a
delicacy for centuries, remains notoriously difficult.
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Turtle numbers have plunged drastically in Malaysia yet their eggs are
still allowed to be sold in markets in Kuala Terengganu
It does not help that
turtles lay so many eggs – a female can lay over 100 at a time, and she may
repeat this six or nine times a year. Up to a thousand eggs per female each
breeding season might seem like an enormous number but this is an
evolutionary adaptation to the precipitous journey each hatchling must make
during its life cycle – only 85% of those eggs will be viable. And of that,
only one in one thousand will survive to adulthood.
Today, with a more
comprehensive understanding about the biology, population genetics and
behavioural patterns of the species, we can afford a fresh take on how these
ancient reptiles have gone from a national icon and worldwide tourist
phenomenon to little more than living fossils on Malaysian shores.
The tale of how it
happened is worth retelling and must not be forgotten for it illustrates why
it is in the interest of everyone that we start saving the other turtle
species.
Taking Stock of The Past
Female turtles lay plenty of eggs each season, for a reason – only
about 0.001% of hatchlings are likely to make it to adulthood.
Thousands of leatherbacks used to frequent
the sleepy shores of Rantau Abang, a small fishing village on the coast of
Terengganu. Eggs were aplenty. Hundreds of thousands were buried in scattered
clutches across the shore, far more than egg collectors could carry, and
plenty for the locals to eat. With road expansion, turtle eggs were soon
transported to new markets as far afield as Kuala Lumpur. The eggs became a
commodity: prices rose and more collectors started digging them up as egg
sales became a lucrative source of income for the under-developed state.
Rantau Abang was soon transformed into one
of the world’s most popular tourist locations to spot leatherbacks.
Leatherbacks are a sight to behold. Unchanged since an age before the
dinosaurs, these ancient reptiles are the turtle-king of superlatives – over
3m in length and weighing as much as 900kg, they are the largest,
deepest-diving and most migratory of all sea turtle species.
In Rantau Abang, scenes of large groups of
tourists crowding around a single nesting female turtle were commonplace in
the 70s and 80s. When the tourists left, the eggs were scooped up for sale.
At the same time, a rapidly developing fishing industry led to leatherbacks
being caught in nets.
Leatherback eggs laid in Terengganu dropped
from 10,000 clutches in 1955 to about 3,000 in the year 1965. In 1999, only
2% of that number was found and by 2002, only three female leatherbacks
reportedly landed on Rantau Abang.
Once they realised numbers were dropping,
conservationists and the state initiated efforts to protect the turtles. The
first Malaysian leatherback hatcheries were established way back in the early
60s.
“At the time, about 4% of eggs in
Terengganu were safeguarded against egg collectors,” says Liew Hock Chark, a
marine biology lecturer at UMT.
That figure wasn’t enough, however,
considering that 0.001% of hatchlings are statistically doomed not to make it
to adulthood. Ironically, those early conservation efforts might have
inadvertently done more harm than good. It was only in the late 80s that
local scientists discovered that turtles undergo environmental sex
determination – which means that eggs laid in hot spots on the beach lead to
100% female hatchlings, whilst eggs laid in cooler spots lead to male ones.
Prior to this, incubation efforts had not been discriminating the temperature
at hatchling sites. In addition to that, development and a decline in beach
vegetation had led to a shortage of cooler nesting areas along the coast.
Joseph explains the situation: “Only a handful
of female leatherbacks have returned to Rantau Abang to nest in the last few
years but none of the incubated clutches contained eggs that actually
hatched.” This, she thinks, could be a symptom of man-made distortions in the
sex ratio of Malaysian leatherbacks, because reptiles will lay eggs even if
they have not been fertilised.
Some say the ban on turtle egg consumption
and the establishmentment of Rantau Abang as a turtle sanctuary came too
late.
Patrolling the vast area to supervise the
ban was difficult, and the Fisheries Department tackled this challenge by
tendering egg collection out to locals.
Each vendor was required to sell all the
collected eggs to the department for incubation in hatcheries. However, when
market prices proved to be more enticing, many eggs ended up being sold for
consumption. To make things worse, lights from resorts along the coast and
vehicle ridden by sanctuary personnel patrolling the beach are thought to
have disorientated the nesting females and hatchlings. Today, the shores of
Rantau Abang are as good as barren.
Save the Other Species
While the local breeding population of
leatherback might be as good as extinct, there are three other known species
of turtle still nesting successfully on Malaysian shores. According to the
International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List, green
turtles are endangered, olive Ridleys are vulnerable, and hawksbills are
critically endangered.
In Peninsular Malaysia, however, none of
these turtle eggs are banned from consumption. At sea, they get entangled in
fishing nets and long lines, and starve after swallowing floating plastic
bags. The fact that turtle migration is transboundary complicates matters.
Green turtles migrate thousands of miles from their breeding ground all over
the world, to converge at specific foraging grounds. However these rich beds
of sea grass are dwindling due to coastal development.
In addition to all that, turtles are being
picked off by poachers. In 2007, the discovery of a shipment containing 397
green and hawksbill turtles aboard a Chinese vessel in the Derawan
Archipelago off eastern Kalimantan, shocked the world.
Some think allowing for the collection of
eggs at home when there are so many threats to the hatchlings that do manage
to survive an ocean full of predators, is ludicrous. Perhaps this is why,
earlier this year, World Wildlife Fund Malaysia made fresh calls for the government
to amend the Fisheries Act 1985 to ban the eating of all turtle eggs.
Countries hosting breeding populations of
turtles might not be able to stop their turtles from being killed beyond
their borders but the resilience of local populations that have benefited
from a complete ban on turtle egg collection seem to indicate the merits of
stemming egg consumption.
Sabah instituted a ban on commercial egg
collection 30 years ago and there has since been a threefold increase in its
breeding population of green turtles, despite numerous poaching cases in the
waters surrounding Borneo.
Conservationists have this message: Turtle
egg consumption, though adhered to for centuries, is no longer a sustainable
practice. Unless action is taken to protect them now, it does not matter how
many turtles are left outside of our national waters – seeing turtles in
Peninsular Malaysia could eventually become a distant memory
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