Preventing the theft of turtle eggs

 

Preventing the theft of turtle eggs
 Humans have been eating sea turtle eggs (and killing adult turtles for meat) for
millennia. However, as human populations exploded and as sea turtles began to
confront additional threats such as intensive fishing, beach development and
climate change, sea turtle populations declined precipitously. Today, all but one of
the world’s seven species of sea turtles are considered threatened according to the
IUCN* Red List. And the one that’s not – the flatback turtle – is listed as data
deficient, which means scientists simply don’t know how it’s doing.

 One major problem is that every year millions of sea turtle eggs are illegally
taken by poachers for sale on the black market. The situation is particularly
serious in Nicaragua, in Central America, which is home to four sea turtle species.
Kim Williams-Guillen, who works for conservation body Paso Pacifico, described
the poaching of sea turtle nests on the beaches of Nicaragua as ‘uncontrolled,
unregulated, extensive and contested’. Even the best-protected beaches are
plundered to some extent and it’s not uncommon to see poachers digging up nests
just meters from tourists watching sea turtles laying their clutch at night, she
said. This poaching becomes particularly frenzied during the arribadas – mass
laying events where thousands of turtles nest on the same beach for a single night
in a biological strategy to overwhelm natural predators.

 ‘Even with armed guards, the numbers of poachers overwhelm military
personnel by ten or twenty to one,’ Williams-Guillen said. ‘Although many
poachers are locals with limited resources, during these arribadas there are
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influxes of gangs of poachers from larger cities outside local communities. These
are not just local poor people without other options.’
But to protect the country’s sea turtles, Williams-Guillen said conservationists
shouldn’t just depend on catching low-level operators. ‘If one poacher decides to
stop, another one will just step into his place ... we need to know more about the
middlemen and people higher up in the distribution chain,’ she said.

 Paso Pacifico’s solution is the creation of high-tech sea turtle eggs: fake eggs
convincingly crafted to look like the real thing, but which contain GPS tracking
devices. These have the potential to reveal the destination markets for trafficked
sea turtle eggs.
Making convincing sea turtle eggs is not easy, and Paso Pacifico is still working on
perfecting a prototype. In particular, it’s proving quite problematic to create the
right texture, since sea turtle eggs are not covered in a hard shell like those of
birds, but are quite flexible.
So Paso Pacifico brought in Lauren Wilde, a special effects artist in the US, to
create a convincing outer shell. First, Wilde had to get her hands on the real thing.
Since it’s illegal to send sea turtle eggs over the border, Wilde is using land turtle
eggs from California. ‘It was really eye opening and important for me to feel these
eggs and how the shell bends a little,’ she said.
To get the GPS device inside the shell, Paso Pacifico is using 3D printers to make a
plastic ball which will then have a GPS transmitter fitted inside. This will take the
place of the embryo inside the shell. Lastly the fake shells will be sealed with
silicone, waterproofing them.

Sea turtles on average lay around 100 eggs in a nest, and once the fake eggs are
finished they will be slipped in with the real ones. Williams-Guilien said it might
even be possible to deliver fake eggs into nests while poachers are at work. Wary of
tourists, poachers will often back off if strangers come near and then return when
they have gone. ‘It would be pretty easy to drop an egg in the dark into a nest they
have been digging up,’ she said.
Once the poacher picks up the fake egg along with the real ones, conservationists
and law enforcement agents will be able to track them. Experts believe most of the
stolen eggs eventually make their way out of Nicaragua, possibly to El Salvador or
Guatemala. However, there is also growing concern that sea turtle eggs from
Central America are actually heading to the USA, from where they are sold on to
other countries around the world.

 To date, Paso Pacifico has yet to put a single fake egg in a nest. But Williams-
Guilien said she isn’t too concerned that publicity for their scheme will result in
poachers looking for the eggs. The vast majority of the poaching is happening at
night, so already it is hard to tell [the eggs] apart, and at this point, poachers and
middlemen are not closely inspecting eggs, but rather shoving them into a sack as
quickly as possible.’
Of course, poachers will eventually become aware of the prospect of fake eggs
among the real ones – especially when customers try to bite into an egg and break
their teeth on the GPS transmitter instead. So, Paso Pacifico plans to do a massive
deployment of as many fakes as possible to gather a lot of data before poachers get
wise. Knowing where the eggs go will allow conservationists and law enforcement agents
to focus their resources on the right places – whether it be through awareness-
building campaigns or crackdowns on illegal sellers. And eventually Paso Pacifico
hopes to share the technology with interested parties around the world.