Socioeconomic Importance of Sea Turtles 



Exploitation (Frederick H. Berry) 



Sea turtle exploitation is the capture and killing of sea 

 turtles of all sizes, by whatever methods, when such harvest is 

 intended . 



Sea turtle exploitation is the collection of the carapaces 

 of Eretmochelvs imbricata by the spiny lobster fishermen of the 

 Bay Islands of Honduras. During 1986-1987, an estimated 5,000 

 hawksbill turtles of all sizes were collected for the Japanese 

 bekko (tortoiseshell) market from the waters of Nicaragua and 

 Honduras by commercial SCUBA divers (Cruz and Espinal, WATS II 

 National Report) . 



Sea turtle exploitation is the eating of about 3 00,000 eggs 

 of Dermochelys coriacea during March to July of this year along 

 the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. In one 5-mile area, for 

 example, daily observations during the nesting season revealed 

 that 862 nests out of the 863 that had been recorded were 

 poached. Interviews during this period indicated that most of 

 the leatherback sea turtle eggs were taken to, and sold in, bars 

 (F. Berry, WATS II Report/Data Set and Poster Session) . 



Sea turtle exploitation is the catch of about 11,000 sea 

 turtles each year by the shrimp fishermen of the Gulf of Mexico 

 and Atlantic coasts of the United States as determined by the 

 NMFS (Henwood and Stuntz 1987) . These sea turtles are taken in 

 shrimp trawls. Most are Caretta caretta, the loggerhead turtle, 

 but several hundreds of those killed annually are Lepidochelvs 

 kempi . the Kemp's ridley sea turtle, which is the most endangered 

 of the world's seven sea turtle species. 



For WATS I (Bacon et al. 1984), we tried to obtain data on 

 exploitation of the six species for the 38 regional countries 

 where it occurred. Our summary table indicated that five of six 

 species were exploited. 



We know now that those records were incomplete and did not 

 adequately represent the quality, nor the quantity of 

 exploitation of the region's sea turtles. For example, a report 

 was not included from Belize of an estimated annual take of about 

 2,000 subadults and adults of Caretta caretta (W. Miller, pers. 

 comm.). Also, the extensive kill of subadult Eretmochelys 

 imbricata in Dominican Republic, represented by the extensive 

 collection of mounted heads in Santo Domingo souvenir stores, was 

 not recorded (observed and photographed by F. Berry) . The 

 thousands of eggs of Dermochelys coriacea that were taken along 



33 



